Gardening by the Moon
by purplehershey
Summary: AU. Swan Queen. Regina flees to the Caribbean for a relaxing vacation after the stinging betrayal of her ex-husband, Robin. Unfortunately, her plans are destroyed when Robin shows up with a new woman at the same resort Regina is staying at. She's miserable until Emma, a beautiful woman with a deep knowledge of the island, reminds Regina what it feels like to fall in love.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: There will be some original characters in this story, some recognizable ones. I'll let everyone know straight up that this story will not be very kind to Robin Hood, so if you're a fan of him, I'd suggest passing. **

**This should end up being pretty long and I plan on updated regularly. I have a good chunk written and have plenty of ideas coming with no writers block in sight. :)**

**Oh, and one last thing, I mention a song later in this chapter. If you're interested in setting it up and playing it when mentioned its: I Like it Like That by Pete Rodriguez. **

**Last of all, ENJOY. Tons of swan queen feels coming your way!**

* * *

All it took was one step off the plane before the wind blew hot across her face. Regina closed her eyes and raised one hand to keep the hat that pushed down her hair and shaded her eyes from flying off and tossing and turning into the current of the wind. The sun reached down with its rays and pulled her lips into an easy smile that only the Caribbean could produce.

As she walked from the quaint airport with her bags in tow, her heels gave into the soft pavement, made pliable and shimmering from the heat. Somewhere in the distance, island music was playing. It was the sort of thing that would have annoyed her at home, something to do with its lack of authenticity. Dirt-caked drums and tanned hands fingering trumpets were the only way to go according to her, anything less was unacceptable. But this, this music floating through the sky with its effortlessly looping beats, this was real, and for once, she was going to enjoy it.

Black asphalt transitioned into white concrete as she neared the car dealership that stood connected to the airport. A giant sign was painted atop the building with the words, Island Auto, spreading across in blocked letters. The paint was chipping a bit on the A, but to her, everything was so goddamn beautiful here that she barely noticed it.

Her manicured hands latched onto the glass door that marked the entrance of the shop and when pulled open, a rush of cool air burst out at her and slithered across her skin until her pores let out a collective sigh. Everything felt good. The heat, the cold, being alive, it was all, just so….good. She searched for a word better than good, a word that didn't seem so shallow to describe how she felt, but could not. It would become a goal, she decided, to find that word. By the end of the trip, she would do it.

"Hola," a young man shouted from behind the front desk. He wore a polo issued by the company, but had left all the buttons undone to reveal his smooth, tanned chest. Around his neck hung one of those touristy shell necklaces, and after he walked around to face Regina, she realized he had one around his bare ankle as well.

"Hello," she replied with a smile. It was generous for her to offer up such a relaxed face that easily, but like she'd already acknowledged, she felt great. The twitch of her lips only widened at the thought of how dismayed all of her employees at home would be to see her right now.

To them, she was the sharp-edged boss who ruled an entire building from inside her office. The only times they saw her was coming in to work, the brief period in the middle of the day when she went to lunch or a meeting, and when she went home. During those times she made sure they were treated with a scornful look and a flip of her hair.

According to her mother there were only two things that a woman needed in life: intimidation and sophistication. It had taken nearly thirty years, but both had finally been drilled into Regina's head and her career had flourished because of it.

On the other hand, her personal life had wilted into a mess of decomposing leaf matter and dirt named Robin because of it, but that was beside the point. The point was that she was free, she was on vacation (sort of), and she was going to enjoy herself.

"What are you looking for today, Señora?" the man spoke with a native accent and each word rolled off his tongue with ease.

"I have a reservation. It's under Regina Mills," she said, sliding her license across the desk. The man took it and glanced at it, his shoulders relaxing at the realization that he wouldn't have to woo another tourist into upgrading from a sedan to a luxury SUV.

After all, this was Regina Mills, and she, of course, had already reserved the most expensive convertible available, complete with leather interior and a killer sound system. Not that she would ever use those descriptions, but that's what the car salesman over the phone had told her when she had called ahead of time to reserve it.

'We've got a beautiful, just beautiful convertible here. Seductive, alluring, powerful, killer sound system, you want it?' She'd been amused by his words, drawn to them even, no matter how colloquially they came out of his mouth and without really understanding why, she'd accepted without any further questions.

As the employee pulled the car around to the front, she walked back outside and immediately the weight of the heat settled down on her shoulders with incredible consistency. She pushed her sunglasses up atop her head, her dark brown hair pulling back with it.

The sun splintered against the red paint of the car and the man hopped out the side without opening a door. He held out her license between two fingers and threw her a wink that she assumed worked for him on most women, but she only pushed her sunglasses down back over her eyes and snapped the license back into her hand.

He loaded the car with her bags, and then held out his business card. "Anytime you need anything just give me a call."

She looked at the card, knowing exactly what she would have done with it if she was at home, something that involved throwing it back in his face and lashing out, but instead she just grabbed it and tossed it into the abyss of the back seat with a good-natured smile.

"Aw, why's it gotta be like that?" the salesman whined when he saw his chance with the attractive woman flutter away with the card, but Regina barely even noticed him. Instead, she ran her fingers over the steering wheel and shifted it into drive, simultaneously cranking up the music to a limit she'd never allow at home.

A raspy male voice with a chorus of women singing 'I like it like that' to a latin beat filled her speakers and she couldn't agree more in that moment.

* * *

Her drive to the hotel could only be described as something from a movie, cascading mountains contrasted with sweeping panoramas of ocean left her juggling between navigating the twisting roads and looking out to appreciate the breathtaking views. Palm trees lined the highway that snaked along the coast and she watched in amusement as boys and girls alike climbed them like monkeys in order to throw down the fruits that dangled teasingly at the top.

The road eventually ascended and then dipped into an expansive complex that she assumed to be the resort. It was accommodating in the sense that the website had assured her it would have everything she needed for a relaxing vacation, and yet she was delighted at how seamlessly it blended into its surroundings.

All of the building's sides were painted pinks and teals and oranges and the ceilings gave off that appearance of being thatched. Plants grew up the walls and lined sidewalks, flowers burst from every direction. Rather than sticking out of the foliage like a man-made eyesore she was so used to seeing in New York, this one was content to hide behind the natural attractions of the island. She could appreciate the beauty in that.

Pulling up to the entrance of the hotel, she settled to park her car on the side of the entrance loop in the shade. Once her music was finally quiet and the engine cut, the rush of the ocean filled her ears and swirled around inside of her, effectively cleaning out months of stress, loneliness, and anger that had built up. She stepped out of the car and strolled, yes, actually strolled, through the sliding glass doors.

"Hello, how can I help you?" An older woman with a puff of white hair floating around her head asked from the behind the desk.

"Regina Mills. I have a reservation," just like at the car dealership, she slid across her license, this time accompanied with her credit card. The woman swiped the cards and fiddled around on the computer before passing back her cards along with a few pamphlets.

"You're in the Garden Suite, Room twelve, wonderful view of the ocean," she pointed to a pink paper with a list of times and locations. "We have tons of activities and excursions available. All meals are included. The restaurant is out back, the bar is attached to that, our concierge can answer any questions you have. They're available 24/7 and probably the most patient people you'll ever meet."

Regina chuckled at that. She wouldn't be a bother on this vacation, but she'd been known to be _that_ customer in the past, calling for information and answers at ungodly hours.

"And Ms. Mills," the woman said with a smile that could only be described as grandmotherly, "have a wonderful time."

A deep sigh emitted from Regina's throat, and with that sigh came everything she had been holding onto: a rough break up, an even rougher sting of betrayal, bitter loneliness that had turned even the most guarded sections of herself ice cold. It was all released into the air and bid farewell. For once, she thought, I am going to have a wonderful time.

And she did, for three whole steps.

"Regina?" The voice cut through her skin and infiltrated her veins like a dye, tainting every inch of blood that had finally begun to transport oxygen with efficiency once again. All healing that had begun from the ocean and the mountains and the palm trees ceased. A shiver ran up her back and she tensed her shoulders from shaking noticeably as it worked its way out of her.

"Regina?" It came again and this time she could not pretend it was a phantom that her brain had invented to torture her. All it took was a careful turn on her heels and her entire vacation was ruined. No, it was more than that. In that simple turn, months of focus, determination, and self-reassurance that she was not an emotionless, worthless, vessel of a beautiful body was destroyed and replaced by a heart that stood too still and hands that weren't still enough.

There, in front of her, stood Robin. Ex-lover, Ex-husband, Ex-partner, or as she liked to refer to him these days: The Cheating Bastard. On his arm was the slim, Mia. Otherwise known by Regina as: Whore.

She knew it wasn't classy to call people whores, or even to think it for that matter, and by principle she tried her best to empower the simple idea of the woman by eliminating man-made derogatory terms from her vocabulary, but goddamn she allowed herself this one.

After all, it wasn't as if Mia was an innocent unsuspecting woman who just happened to get entangled in a marriage by ways of her ex-husbands charm. No, Mia had been actively involved in Regina's life before she met Robin, and even after she met Robin, and even further while she was secretly fucking Robin.

She had been there holding Regina's hand while Regina waded through years of emotional abuse and self-doubt put on by her mother. She had been there when Regina had upped her weekly visits from two to four during a particularly rough patch in her life.

And of course, she had been there when Regina had burst into her office in tears, crying that she was sure, so absolutely sure, that her husband was cheating on her. She had definitely been there for that, because when Regina did break open that door and run in with mascara tracks down her face she had found Mia, her psychologist, her confident, her friend, writhing on her desk in pleasure, Robin's naked body looming over her.

And now, they were both standing there in front of her.

Fuck.

"What are you doing here?" Robin asked in an accusatory tone that made Regina's teeth ache.

"What are _y__ou_ doing here?" Regina shot back. So far, during the separation, and the divorce, and even after that, Regina had remained a strong resolve around Robin. He had never seen her, besides that unfortunate scene in the Mia's office that is, as broken as she felt by the whole ordeal, and she wasn't planning on starting now.

"We're here for vacation," he said as he waved his hand between his chest and Mia's. Regina glanced to Mia, who cast her eyes down to the ground. The nerve, Regina thought, for them, for her, to show up here.

"And you had to pick this place?" Regina spat as her eyes worked to level Robin to the ground. She remembered him claiming a few times during their marriage that she had the power to reduce men into puddles of piss with her glares. She hoped he was included in this description.

"Well, you had it all planned, and a bunch of the bookmarks were still on my computer so I figured it would be easier than starting all over."

"On the exact weekend I had planned for us to go?" Regina's strength was weakening and when she saw Mia's hand stroking up and down Robin's arm she knew it was only a matter of time before Robin would get the satisfaction of seeing her crumble.

"It's just a weekend." He said it with a shrug, which was so typical. So typical. He had never looked beyond the outside of Regina, instead treating her emotions like some inconvenience should they not match up with his own. Even now, apart, he was still doing it.

The truth was that it was not "just a weekend" or "just a place". It was supposed to be their vacation. During their relationship, Regina had been planning it meticulously for months. It was supposed to be their rekindling vacation where they fell in love once again. It was supposed to be the vacation where Robin stopped hating Regina and started adoring her and where Regina allowed him to. But then The Office Incident happened and obviously all plans after that were abandoned.

"Whatever," was all Regina could squeak out before tilting her head toward the bellhop who had been awkwardly standing with her bags the entire time, waiting for directions. Once his attention was captured the two of them, Regina and the bellhop, walked toward the elevator.

"Wait," Robin called after her. Regina hadn't planned to turn around to even listen to him, but he had jogged up next to her so she wasn't left with much of a choice. "Did you use the reservation? Cause I was kind of banking on the suite still being free."

Regina's mouth actually opened. It was just a sliver of a slot, but it slacked for sure. "You mean using the reservation I made with my credit card?"

"I was planning on putting my own information down, but yeah, that one. Did you use it?" Robin asked.

"Yes I fucking used it," Regina muttered between gritted teeth. Her hands squeezed tight around her purse and her she feared her jaw muscles would cramp up and never open again from how tightly she was clenching them.

He nodded after a pause and ran back to the front desk. Regina took the opportunity to stomp into the elevator. She and the bellhop spent a tense couple seconds of silence traveling up to the second floor. When they got to her room, he threw down the bags unceremoniously and hurried out of there before she even got to press a few bills into his hand, no doubt wanting to be as far away from the ticking bomb that was Regina when time ran out.

As predicted, once the door to her suite was shut and the bags placed on the floor, Regina walked over to the couch and picked up a lamp that sat on a side table. With a snap, she pulled the plug from the wall outlet and smashed it on the floor. Glass from the bulb skittered across the wooden panels, but the wire-frame of the shade merely bent out of shape. Picking it up, Regina smashed it once again, the wire bending more and the linen shade tearing from the torque.

She walked to the nearest wall and slid down until she sat on the ground, her head burying in her own lap. Tears came silently and flowed without distinguishable drops. The sound of the waves slapping against the shore filtered in through the open window as a condolence, but the sound only caused her buried head to dip deeper into her lap.

A stinging in her hand caused her head to turn and she observed the pricked marks of blood that peeked out of her palm like flower buds. Jigsaw pieces of light bulb lay around her and she guessed that a few were probably poking into her legs as she sat, too bad the numbness had already settled there.

She waited a few seconds, knowing that the numb tingling that always began in her legs would soon be spreading up her abdomen and into her hands and arms. Then, the stinging would stop.

Sure enough, it did. It expanded and attacked her limb by limb until she was no more feeling than a block of ice.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Figured I'd ge the ball rolling faster in the beginning rather than slower. After this, I'll most likely be updating every few days. Hope you like it!**

* * *

The wary descent of the sun and the greeting of the moon brought about a positive change in Regina's psyche. She was odd in that way. The night was when she came alive. It was when she flourished. It was when she healed.

Consequently, Robin had always been a morning person, a difference that Regina had never thought twice about, until now. So even when she was married to Robin, those wonderful hours where the numbers climbed high to twelve and then dropped back down to one, Regina was always alone.

Alone was a strange concept in itself though. Regina could argue that feeling alone was not determined by the number of people present, but the condition of the soul. Alone during the day meant aching isolation in a too-crowded world, but alone at night meant freedom in a world where most of its patrons were sleeping. She preferred the night version.

Because of this, when she lifted her head from the cave created between her knees, she was more than pleased to be met with the outstretched hand of night herself. 'Welcome back', the shadows that danced along the walls seemed to say, 'glad you made it.'

With a shallow breath that skimmed just the tops of her lungs, she pushed herself off the ground and stretched out her legs, finding it almost comical that her heels had remained on her feet all this time. Those came off within seconds. Padding around the suite, she peeked into each room to finally see where it was she would be staying for the coming week.

She was pleased to see that the inside of the rooms matched the exterior with its abundance of plants and bright colors. The bedroom, living room, and kitchen were standard. Beautiful, but standard.

It was the hotel balcony that caught her off guard. It was painted all white, every inch of it was white, with lanterns and string lights decorating its corners and nooks. With a flip of a switch, the lights were illuminated and a glow cast upon Regina's face. It was paradise in the form of a floating white cloud; it was heaven.

Looking back, it was those lights that filled her with enough determination to get changed and go out to the hotel restaurant that night. It seemed silly, but she could directly trace the uncurling and relaxing of her heart back to those lights.

As she put on a white linen dress that would no doubt blow like laundered sheets strung up in the wind, she took in a deep breath, and then another, and another, and soon she was breathing deeply without even trying. Her hands ran from her roots to the tips while they shook out the waves that found their way into her hair no matter how often she straightened it.

Robin had always said he liked straight hair on woman. Regina smiled and she allowed her hair to fall next to her neck, loving those waves more than anything else in this moment. _Screw him_, she thought to herself, _screw him_.

Regina exited the back door of the hotel and immediately a canopy-like building popped up from the ground in front of her. The building was open-air, with no walls and a high ceiling punctuated by spinning fans. Lights strung along the beams and through the ceiling, flickering torches stood around it as attentive guards, warding off mosquitos and darkness alike.

With a slow pace, she walked the thin pathway of concrete that was surrounded by sand on either side until the firm ground opened up to support the restaurant and bar. A sign stood on its own at the front of the restaurant, 'sit wherever you'd like,' scratched across it in chalk.

She ignored the open seats of the restaurant, instead walking to the back where the bar was. Behind the bar was the only wall-like structure to exist in the establishment, and even then, it was loaded with so many liquors that it looked more like a giant shelf than a wall.

Seating herself on an end stool, she fiddled with a piece of a straw wrapper that had been abandoned by the person who had been sitting in the place before her. She twisted it and knotted it several times without a glance for the bartender. It wasn't the she'd wanted a drink more than a meal, in fact, neither seemed to be what she really wanted right now, but the singular stool seemed less revealing than sitting at a table among laughing families in the restaurant portion.

After all, no matter how much she convinced herself Robin didn't matter, and no matter how hard she believed it, he was still here. And she didn't exactly know if tonight was a night she could deal with watching him fawn over The Whore while she sat eating, alone.

"What would you like?"

Regina tipped up her head and stilled the white paper wrapper between her fingertips. Her eyes widened as she was ripped from the world that existed only inside her head.

"I'm sorry, what?" she replied, not catching the first line the woman behind the bar had thrown at her.

"What would you like?" The woman repeated with a smile that somehow made Regina feel like they already shared an inside joke.

"Oh. I don't know yet," Regina replied, much too distracted by the strange way this bartender was looking at her. It wasn't that it wasn't nice, it was. It was just that Regina was not used to people looking at her as if they cared, truly cared how she was, when they asked for her drink order.

"Ah, a challenge, then?" The bartender responded with a clicking of her tongue. Her smile quirked into something more mischievious and she tilted her head while looking at Regina as if she was reading her like a book. Regina for her part remained confused, but appeared strong nonetheless, straightening her back and squaring her shoulders as she was observed.

A black hair tie slipped off the wrist of the bartender and with a few flicks her blonde curls were pulled back into a low ponytail that meant business. Reaching her hand down, the blonde slapped a coaster onto the bar top in front of Regina and set to work retrieving a glass from underneath the shelf.

The whole time Regina watched her with a careful eye, only now understanding that the woman's gaze had been about choosing a drink for her. Somehow, it had felt like more. Somehow, she wished it'd been more.

With a gentle hand the bartender placed a glass on the coaster in front of Regina, all the while keeping her eyes on the bottles of liquor, a gentle smile, another unshared inside joke, resting on her face.

She gathered several bottles in her arms from the back shelf and brought them over the ledge behind the bar. A few of them were poured into a silver shaker, mixed with ice, shaken and poured into the bottom of the glass.

Only a thin puddle of liquid filtered out of the shaker, a quarter-inch of drink, leaving plenty of empty space inside the glass. Regina was about to question it, but faltered when she saw the blonde woman rinsing out the shaker and pouring more bottles into it for another round.

When the second layer of mixed liquid poured out the shaker, and balanced on top of the previous layer by way of a lighter density, the bartender kneeled down to eye the drink from a lower level, for some reason, Regina did the same.

With their faces now at even heights, separated by only the bar and the glass, they connected gazes in a brief jolt. The bartender pointed to the drink, "that's about as scientific as you can get back here."

Regina looked at her strangely, completely bewildered by what was going on here, completely unsure why this bartender had decided not only make her a labor-intensive drink when she had not asked for it, but also that she'd needed a science lesson on the effect of differing densities.

Laughter bubbled in the back of the bartender's throat and she reached up and continued her drink making, her eyes watching Regina amusingly. Once she was sure she had a crowd from the brunette customer, she flipped the shaker around her back and over her head, all with ease, all with that smile.

For her part, Regina remained unrevealing, only allowing a hint of a smile at the corners of her lips when the blonde almost dropped the shaker during her flipping show. Eventually, after a ridiculous amount of time, really, Regina's drink was done. The blonde bartender pushed it toward her and leaned forward on the sink.

"Go for it," she said with a wink. _Oh God,_ Regina thought when she saw her wink, _Oh God_. She didn't know why she thought it, but she did.

Regina reached over the bar to the where a cup of straws lay and unearthed one from its wrapped. Dipping the straw in, she watched as it sunk into five different layers of color. Her first sip was from the bottom most layer, and she had to admit, it was delicious.

"How many other places can you get five drinks in one glass?" the bartender asked while throwing a towel over her shoulder. Regina glanced up from her straw.

Not one for clichés, she was hesitant to throw out phrases like 'their eyes locked' or 'time slowed' but for God's sake something in the time-space continuum changed in that moment. It had to have. There was just no other reason to describe a reason to explain why Regina felt perfectly content to stare at that bartender's perfectly molded features so brazenly. It was either that, or her drink was drugged.

"I'm Regina," she burst out when the bartender had begun to turn to wash some dishes. She flattened her palms on the bar top as she said it, something to do with anchoring herself down and keeping from floating away. Condensation from the cold drink had gathered on the glass and rolled down the side, making the surface of the bar slick beneath her palms.

The blonde woman turned too fast to not have been expecting it and held out her hand as well, dripping in dish soap and water.

"I'm Emma." She said. Regina grabbed her hand without looking at its state. They both glanced down with their lips twisted when they realized their handshake turned out to be sopping wet, soapy mess.

Uncharacteristically, it was Regina who was the first to laugh, pulling her hand back and shaking as much water off as she could onto the floor. Emma did the same and soon napkins were dolled out to dry the splash of droplets that littered the bar.

"Are you staying at the hotel?" Emma asked after leaning over and resting her elbows on the bar. Regina threaded her hand in her hair and rolled her head to the side to look at Emma who seemed unphased at giving the brunette her full attention. Their faces stood just a handful of inches away from each other. Somehow, they had decided together that personal space was not something that was needed between them.

"Yes, room twelve." Regina had no idea why she'd provided her room number. It was a stupid thing that her mouth blurted out without a second thought. But now, as it hung in the air, it seemed to be heavy with unspoken intention that she hadn't exactly meant.

"The Garden Suite. Impressive. How are you liking it?" Emma's eyes flickered beyond Regina as she asked it and Regina's head turned to follow her view. Over on the other end of the bar was a man standing and waving his hand. He obviously wanted to flag down someone for a drink, but instead of going to attend to him, Emma only hunched over more and hid in the space blocked by Regina.

"Are you going to help him?" Regina asked with a puff of a laugh as the woman attempted to shrink even smaller.

"Nah," Emma said with a shrug. Her body language told Regina that ignoring the customer was no big deal, but the way her eyes sparkled she could tell it was an action of mischief.

The man began calling behind the bar for some help, yelping out something like, 'Can I get a drink here? Hello?' He continued to look back and forth to no avail. Regina's head switched between the man and Emma. It wasn't until her third glance that she realized Emma was no longer paying attention to the struggling man, but was instead watching her as if she were a premiere form of entertainment.

"What?" She asked after she saw Emma run her hand through her hair and mutter something along the lines of 'I'm so screwed.'

Instead of responding, Emma just waved to a spot behind Regina and said, "watch this. " Regina followed her gaze to a different man with dark brown hair approaching the bar. He was wearing a t-shirt with the restaurant logo on the front, and it was the first time Regina realized Emma was not wearing one, instead opting for a thin tank top.

When the approaching man saw the customer shouting for a beer, he quickly shooed him away without filling his order. The customer, who Regina assumed must be a regular, slunk away and disappeared into the darkness of the beach. Immediately after that was taken care of, the man with the restaurant logo shirt looked towards Emma, a grin of playful scorn dancing upon his face.

"What are you doing back here?" He asked. Emma held up her hands and ducked underneath a portion of the bar that had free air traveling through it. When she appeared on the other side, the man shook his head. He turned to Regina.

"Was she bothering you?" He asked with his eyes on the blonde.

"No," Regina answered, wrinkles appearing and disappearing on her forehead in confusion.

"Was she pretending to be a bartender?" He looked at the drink that stood in front of Regina, "let me guess, she made you this?"

Regina turned to Emma, "You're not the bartender?"

Emma grinned, "Nope."

"Then, what…"

"She's a wannabe. You gonna pay for this Swan?" He motioned toward the five-layered drink in front of Regina.

"I can pay for it," Regina responded and reached down into her purse. Before she got very far a hand stopped her, Emma's hand. The blonde looked over to the man, the real bartender, and said, "put it on my tab," with a wave of her hand.

The man rolled his eyes and picked up a towel, walking down to the other side of the bar, which was now vacant and splashed with abandoned drinks.

Turning on the stool, Regina faced Emma, who was now standing in front of her with her hands dug in her shorts pockets.

"So what now?" Emma asked. The words came out of her mouth so gently that Regina knew all it would take would be a downturn of her lips and Emma would be gone. Without even knowing her, Regina could tell she was that type of person. Bold, charming, willing to disappear after a simple look if it meant she wasn't wanted.

"I do have to eat eventually," Regina said.

After a quirk of an eyebrow and a clearing of her throat, Emma tilted her head to the side, "are you looking for a waitress or a dinner companion?"

"Oh, so you play waitress, too?"

Regina could tease, just like the blonde could. It took her awhile and most of the time she felt awkward as all hell when she did it, but she could be charming and friendly to strangers she didn't know. At home she usually never saw the point in it, but here, if it meant saving her the embarrassment of having Robin see her eating alone, she could bear it.

"I could run this hotel if it was up to me," Emma replied, another inside joke playing upon her lips. Regina wondered if she hung around this woman enough, she would learn the reasons for the smiles that hung like dangling secrets right outside her grasp.

"Somehow I doubt that. We'll go with dinner companion for now."

* * *

They sat at a two-person table near the edge of the restaurant. It was one of the only ones left and it didn't even require any shuffling or sidestepping to get to it. When they were settled, Emma waved over a waitress who hurried to them at impressive speed. Regina couldn't do anything but stare; it seemed this woman had the entire place under a spell.

Food was ordered, tons of food. Food with names Regina had never heard of. Food Regina would never have thought to try. All Regina had to do was point out an item or linger her gaze on a place on the menu and Emma would order it.

The blonde joked with the waitress and smiled at Regina as if they'd known each other for years, and Regina couldn't help but wonder if she had fallen asleep in the hotel and woken up with a dream.

Emma asked her questions like what brought her to the island, and if she was enjoying herself, and what she wanted to do in the coming days and Regina couldn't help but answer them truthfully. It felt like she had no control over the honesty that spewed out of her, like Emma had a draw that left helpless.

And they laughed. It was unusual how much they laughed. At least, for Regina it was unusual. They laughed over a joke Emma told, an awful joke, a joke told to make Regina more comfortable.

They laughed because a child at the table next to them had chucked pineapple pieces in Regina's hair. Regina laughed especially hard when Emma reached over the table to pull a lingering piece out, because of how embarrassed she felt and how close Emma was and for some reason a memory of her and her college friends sitting in a circle asking each other if they could ever be with a girl came to mind.

In that circle, she's said 'no, definitely not,' and she'd held onto that belief all her life. That is, until Emma was leaning over her just now and pulling pineapple out of her hair. Now, all she could think was, 'yes, hell yes.'

But once the pineapple was out and Regina's personal space was restored, the thought submerged deep into the depths where it had come from and she spent the next hour trying to push the thought even deeper, repeating to herself how nice it was to have a friend. A friend. A friend.

* * *

A flash of pink was the first signal that the heavenly lightness of the night was about to end. Another flash and Regina's head was pulled from her table, her eyes moths to that color. Pink pants led into a brown belt and a white shirt that she had picked out and once she had reached his face she couldn't deny anymore. It was Robin, and beside him was a pink dress belonged to Mia, and their disgustingly matching pink outfits were standing at the hostess table ready to be seated.

Regina ducked behind Emma the way the blonde had done to her hours back at the bar, shrinking into Emma's shadow, wishing she was invisible.

"Uh…" Emma eyed Regina's suddenly small form and peeking eyes.

She remained still, "who are you hiding from?"

Regina's eyes became crescents near the top of her eyelids and she felt the newly formed bond between her and Emma sever painfully. For some reason Regina was stung by disappointment that the air of familiarity she felt for Emma did not extend to past knowledge of her ex-husband.

It would have been so much easier, she mentally sighed, if she and Emma had just known each other for years. It was a thought that Regina was terribly embarrassed to have after that fact. Wanting to be someone's friend for years after knowing them for several hours was something that lunatics said, crazy people, romantics. Not her.

Friends were commodities that she could not afford in her lifestyle. Too much risk, not enough payoff. It sounded cold, and it was, but there was a clear difference between being frigid out of cockiness and being frigid out of protection.

"My ex-husband Robin. He's here with The Whore." Regina said, her eyes still peeking around Emma's shoulders. It wasn't until a moment later that she'd processed that she'd used the personal nickname for Mia, heat rose to her face as a result.

"The Whore, huh?" Emma was grinning. She'd known this woman for a total of two hours and fifty minutes. She liked her. They would be friends. And if she was even the slightest bit gay, Emma would have offered herself up to her on the spot, but alas, she was not.

Emma was used to pursuing straight women only to find out they weren't interested in her like that. She didn't really take it to heart, and she never went any farther with it. To her sexuality was something personal, not to be messed with by outside influences. The second she got a straight vibe, the walls went up, the flirting down, and Friend Emma came out.

For Regina it had been a toss-up. She'd figured she ran straight and narrow, but the woman had submerged her hand into Emma's chest and clenched onto her heart from the minute she saw her, so she took a leap.

Unfortunately, at the words, _ex-husband_, Emma's flying, floating, drifting, gravity-free leap ended, leaving her gravel-imbedded and bloodied upon crash-landing.

But it didn't matter how devastated she felt right now. She had to clean herself up within a few blinks of her lashes and be the friend Regina needed because from the way the woman's eyes were darting back and forth, and the way her hands were shaking, she needed one desperately.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Thanks for all the feedback guys! You have no idea how much favorites and follows mean to an author., especially reviews. Every single one brings a smile to my face :) **

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"Regina?" Emma nudged the woman sitting across from her. Her back might be facing Robin and The Whore, but Regina's was not. In fact, Regina had a perfect view of the couple as they chatted up the hostess and waited for a table to clear.

"Regina?"

Another nudge went unnoticed, so Emma resorted to skin-to-skin contact. She could've blamed it on the fact that she only wanted to tear the woman from whatever sadistic world she was in, but she probably could have done that with another nudge. So with soft pressure, Emma ran her fingers over Regina's hand and sure enough the brunette woman snapped to attention.

"What?"

"Don't do that," Emma said, still pressed against Regina's olive skin.

Regina glanced a few times distractedly at their hands before looking up at Emma, "do what?"

"Torture yourself like that."

"I'm not." The way the words rolled off Regina's tongue, with too much force and too much bitterness, it became inherently clear that was exactly what she was doing.

It's not like she wanted to. She absolute despised the pain that accompanied it, she just couldn't help but flashback to the Office Scene whenever she saw them. Over and over and over, it spun through her head like a merry-go-round without a stop lever, obnoxious music and flashing lights included.

"You are," Emma's voice shattered her world once again. She and Emma were still touching, linked by their hands, electricity coursing between them pleseantly. Oh, and a few of their fingers had intertwined. That was happening as well. For some reason the implications of this suddenly became searing hot on Regina's fingers and she pulled her hand away and dropped it to her lap.

Emma let out a tiny sigh that wasn't meant for anyone to hear. Except Regina caught it and squinted her eyes. _What was exactly going on here?_

When the table just behind Emma's back, and just within Regina's view, was cleared away, Regina felt her tongue swell. "They're going to sit there," she choked.

Emma glanced behind her and muttered, "oh, shit," before turning back to the woman whose face was already a sickly green. "Do you want to move? Or I can have them sit somewhere else. I'll just talk to the waitress."

"No." It came out like a tiny child's voice: squeaky and defenseless and utterly heart breaking. When Emma heard it she wanted to throttle the neck that had caused that voice.

Emma's first thoughts were usually to respond with violence. Not, like, psychotic violence, just a little physical intervention. According to her a punch in the face or a shove in the chest could do a person some good at times. Especially if the person was the son-of-a-bitch who had royally screwed over her new friend. God, it all sounded ridiculous when she remembered how little time had passed since she met the woman.

Then, a thought was born in Emma's head. It was a tiny thought, one that grew without sunlight or food. It multiplied exponentially by the minute, no, by the second until it was so big that Emma could barely contain it within herself. A thought that was simultaneously selfish and selfless, one that would torture her and help Regina and be amazing and awful at the same time. One that she had no idea how Regina would take.

"How does your ex-husband feel about lesbians?" It wasn't the exact words Emma had wanted use to ease into this huge, gigantic, monstrous idea, but she never did have a way with subtlety.

Regina chewed on her lip. She didn't know why, it was never a habit that had haunted her in the past, but there she was gnawing away as she stared at Emma's waiting face. A long time passed before either of them spoke again.

"Our entire marriage he'd wanted us to have a threesome, but I never would," Regina finally spat out as if the words were diseased themselves. She tried with desperation to read Emma's face, wishing she knew what was going on inside that head of hers.

Now it was Emma's turn to think. She puffed out her lips and grimaced at revealing her idea to the brunette. Not because of the whole, 'she must be straight' spiel, but because it was crazy, absolutely crazy.

Somehow, Regina caught that from the way Emma was fidgeting around that something was going on and she wanted to set the record straight. "It's not that I can't, you know, see myself…like…" she struggled to spit the words out and Emma found it adorably charming. She chastised herself mentally after realizing she was fantasizing, a big no-no.

Thankfully before she could further punish herself for violating her Friend Code Regina finally finished the sentence, "like that. I just knew I wouldn't be able to give him what he wanted. You know, with him watching, I didn't know how to be sexy around women."

Emma felt a twist in her stomach. _What had she gotten herself into?_ Flashes of images that did not belong in her brain continued cycling behind her eyes. Regina fiddled around with the knife that sat on the table.

"Men are no problem usually. I know how to navigate the world of men, but women were never really something that I…" Regina decided then to look up at Emma who was staring at her in rapture. It also looked, a little, like she was in pain. Her gaze skimmed along the peaks and valleys of Emma's face and she found her voice coming out breathless.

"…something that I've ever done."

The corner of Emma's lips twitched when she caught Regina's choice of words and soon after Regina realized it as well.

"I mean done as in I've never gone there. I've never thought about it."

"Really?" Emma said. The words tumbled out with genuine surprise before Emma could stop them.

"Um, well," Regina felt her chest imploding into itself. She felt naked around the blonde. In every which way, she felt naked. "Yeah," Regina finally settled on.

If she was being honest she would have said, 'no, not really, because ever since the pineapple in my hair I've entertained the idea, with you in fact, which is extremely inconvenient and confusing and I wish it would stop,' but she would have rather died than said that in that moment.

Emma spun behind her and realized that a hostess with menus in hand was finally approaching, Regina's ex-husband and Mia trailing behind. She whipped back to Regina. The woman seemed to be in painful thought, the color drained completely out of her face. A sympathy stab stung in Emma's chest.

"I know this is crazy, but I have an idea," she said. Regina snapped back to reality, but looked hopeful at Emma's suggestion.

"What is it?"

"I know it's absolutely nuts, I know-"

"Emma, what is it?" It was the first time Emma's name had rolled off the tip of Regina's tongue and oh man, how she loved the way it sounded.

"Well I mean because we just met and-"

"Emma," Regina's voice was sharp and her eyes kept flicking behind Emma's head where Robin and Mia were walking toward the table. Thankfully, they had not seen her yet. Instead, they were too busy trying to navigate around a little boy who had decided to throw a tantrum in the middle of the pathway. The hostess smiled at the mother who was trying to scoop her child up off the ground, but he was a fighter.

"Emma," she repeated despite the fact the blonde woman's attention was already captured, "anything."

She would be willing to go along with anything at this point. Anything so that Robin would see her alone, weak, needy. Anything so she wouldn't have to see his pitiful smile directed towards her, which was nothing more than a disguised declaration of 'I win'. Anything to avoid that.

Emma gave in and nodded. She would do it. She wished that she could have run it by the woman before she actually went through with it, but Regina's ex-husband was only a couple tables away and bound to look up any moment. She pushed out her chair and hurried away from the table.

Regina watched with a slack jaw as Emma abandoned her and tripped through the sea of tables towards the bar. She glanced toward Robin who was just a table away, talking to the hostess. She panicked. _This was Emma's big plan? Leaving her to be embarrassed and humilia-_

"Regina." Robin had finally looked up as he stood to the side of his table. His hand clutched Mia's.

Regina made her face as blank as possible, revealing nothing. "Robin," she said. Her eyes flicked to Mia, but she made no effort to greet her.

"You're eating at that table, huh," Robin said in a disappointed manner. In response, Regina just squinted her eyes. Yes, she was eating at this table, she was sitting at it after all. And the way he sounded it sounded like that was the last thing he wanted, for her to be so near to him. _Maybe my presence will ruin his meal,_ Regina thought. _Maybe he won't be able to stomach a piece of food from all the guilt._

"Yes."

"Alone?" he asked. She wanted to sock him in the face just then. Of course she was alone. She had come on vacation alone, she was sitting at the table alone, why the hell would he ask her if she was alone? Probably to rub it in her face. When she saw his eyes sparkle and flash to Mia she knew that she was exactly right. He just wanted to rub it in her face.

Just as she was about to respond with another inevitable, 'yes', she felt an arm on her bicep. When she turned, Emma was placing two drinks on the table in front of her. Regina stood up uneasily, now feeling awkward that she was the only one still sitting down.

"Hey, sorry it took so long," Emma said before she leaned in and brushed her lips against Regina's cheek in a kiss. A shock occurred at the place where Emma's lips touched her skin and rolled down in waves through her neck, her chest, each of her arms. She waited for them to reach her toes, but they fizzled out somewhere before her knees.

When she snapped back to reality, she saw Robin and Mia staring at them. Emma was also looking at her, but she was smiling.

"Are these your friends?" Emma asked with a glance toward Robin as she slipped a hand around Regina's waist. She touched Regina lightly, not wanting to move too fast, not exactly knowing how Regina would take this. She noticed that Robin could not keep her hands off that arm.

"No," Regina said, finally understanding what Emma was planning on doing. She had meant to say more, to explain, but that arm was around her and Emma was even closer than the pineapple incident so she was having trouble thinking clearly at the moment.

"Oh," Emma laughed lightly, and turned to Robin's stunned face, "well have a good meal." She pulled her seat from the other side of the table to next to Regina's.

Regina felt a smirk blossom on her face. Emma didn't know it, but she and Robin had always made fun of couples that did that, sat next to each other on one side of the table. They always said it was ridiculous, foolish even to be so in love you couldn't sit across from each other. Yet, here Emma was doing it. Regina wanted to wrap her arms around the woman and hug her until she couldn't anymore.

But she didn't.

And she wouldn't.

Just before Regina moved to sit down next to Emma, Robin, whose eyes still lingered on their table, spoke up.

"Are you two…" except he couldn't get the rest of the words to escape his mouth. They seemed stuck somewhere in his throat.

"Together?" Regina finished for him, her smirk turning evil. "Yes, we're on vacation here together." She turned to look at Emma with fondness that didn't exactly need to be faked and ran her hand through Emma's hair, flipping the front strands out of her face.

Robin didn't respond, only sat down with a rough thud and grabbed Mia's hand forcefully, squeezing it hard. Regina wished she could have seen Mia's face then, but she had turned away.

Emma swung her arm over the back of Regina's chair, not as a part of the ploy, but more because their chair were wedged so close she didn't really have room to hang it down by her side. Unconsciously, Regina leaned into the arm.

"So, what now?" Regina asked excitedly. Emma was caught off guard; she hadn't planned anything else. She'd figured Regina would have gotten too uncomfortable at this point.

"Well, I mean how far do you want to go with this?" Emma asked, her own grin spreading. Mischief was a favorite pastime for her, and in this case it was not only mischief, it was mischief and a pretty girl. In her world, it couldn't get better.

"Well we're going to have to keep going on with this the entire vacation," Regina began, too excited to take a breath in between words. "And I want him to bump into us whenever he starts to think maybe he can forget what an ass he is and," Regina glanced at Emma's face, which was filled with equal parts amusement and something that said, 'oh my god what did I get myself into'... I want him to crack," Regina finally decided in the end. That was the goal. She wanted him to crack.

Chuckling Emma nodded and leaned back to the side of Regina's head. As she did it, she checked to make sure Robin was looking. He was. He was pretending not to, but he was. When her lips finally grazed the shell of Regina's ear, she felt the brunette's body jolt up in surprise, but then immediately after, relax.

"I have a couple ideas on how to do that," Emma whispered, her lips scraping against the skin of Regina's ear with each word. It wasn't exactly necessary considering Robin couldn't see that closely what she was doing, but she was a sucker for torture so she couldn't exactly help herself.

Regina gripped the side of her seat with knuckles that were paling faster than her face. Emma's lips were doing things to her that she had never really thought possible. Strangely enough she found her eyes leaning to the side to catch a glance at the blonde rather than her ex-husband.

"Let's hear them," Regina said weakly.

"One. You laugh at a hilarious joke I'm telling you right now," Emma said while Regina could feel a smile form against her skin. Regina laughed easily. Apparently it had already been waiting in her chest, ready to be released on command.

"What's next, mastermind?" Regina asked.

"Two," Regina couldn't help a shiver travel up her spine as Emma's breath breezed into her ear and tornado-ed around before escaping in a sigh, "I think you should look like I'm saying something very...private to you." Emma's voice wavered when she said that, and she hoped to God that Regina would not turn her head to look her in the eyes. She didn't think she could handle that at this point.

Regina was tempted to say, 'like what', but she refrained because it was ridiculous, overwhelmingly ridiculous to be feeling the way she was right now. Instead she just slacked her jaw and leaned into Emma's ear the way she would have if Emma really had been describing those _thing__s. _

"And next?" Regina whispered just barely. She knew if she was standing her knees would be weak and shaking. Even know, seated, and gripping a sturdy piece of furniture she felt like maybe the entire world would just fall away beneath her.

Emma pulled her face from Regina's and looked at her straight on. They both gulped from the tension that each thought was a figment of their imagination.

"I don't think you're going to like it," Emma said with a glance toward Robin. Oh, how that man was boiling. She was surprised his skin didn't burn right off and float in the sky like specks of glowing ashes based on how angry he looked.

"Kiss me," Regina whispered once her eyes had finally snapped away from Emma and locked on Robin. His glaring looks felt like lotion on her skin, relieving, soothing and so, so worth it. She'd probably do just about anything in that moment to get back at him.

"What? I mean, what? You sure?" Emma asked as she tried to gauge Regina's seriousness, but Regina was too busy staring back at Robin to notice.

Suddenly it came back to Emma in the form of a rolling semi-truck that this was all an act. This wasn't real. Regina didn't really like her like that and they were not actually a couple together.

"Yeah, make sure he's watching," Regina said because that's why they were doing this whole thing to begin with, right?

Emma swallowed the hurt that she knew she shouldn't be feeling. After all, it wasn't like they were doing this for any other reason than to exact some revenge. So she leaned in with hesitancy and waited for Regina's gaze to connect with her own.

Watching Robin's face descend into frustration and then anger was entertaining in itself, but when Regina turned back to glance at Emma's she was struck by the situation that was occurring before her. Emma was willing give her the greatest payback imaginable. But for some reason, she couldn't do it.

She couldn't get herself to kiss the beautiful woman in front of her as a ploy to make Robin jealous. It didn't seem right. She had no idea why, Emma was offering herself up for the taking, but maybe that was the problem. Maybe she didn't want to take Emma because of Robin. Maybe she just wanted to take Emma.

Thankfully, her spinning brain was cut short because Robin had suddenly pushed up from his chair. He threw his napkin on the table. "Bullshit," he shouted before storming out the restaurant, Mia straggling behind.

Faces still inches apart, Emma's arm still slung around her chair, laps practically on top of each other, Regina was forced out of the dream they had created. She felt hungover, off of what she didn't know, but she definitely felt hungover.

What had just occurred, the almost kiss, the unspoken words seduction that hung heavy in the air, Emma's proximity, it was all too much.

With her elbows on the table and her head hanging between her arms, Regina rubbed her temples to ward off the headache she already felt coming on. Emma fiddled with her hands, all of the sudden feeling incredibly stupid.

"I need a drink," Regina groaned.

Emma sighed, "me too."


	4. Chapter 4

**Your reviews give me life! Thank you all so much :) Also... Eli, dude, whoever you are, I am forever indebted. So appreciative of your chapter critiques. **

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"How did you learn to make that drink?"

"I don't remember. Someone taught me."

"How many layers do you think you could make?"

"At least twelve. At least. Maybe more. "

"You think you could put a layer of orange juice in it?"

"Definitely."

"The room is spinning a little."

"Yeah. For me, too."

"I kind of like it."

"I like it a lot. Feels like a rollercoaster."

"You think you could make it for me right now?"

"Make what?"

"The drink."

"Oh. Yeah. Right now?"

"Yeah, right now."

"After one more shot?"

"Yeah, after one more shot."

"No more shots." The voice of Killian, the bartender, broke the casual volley of Regina's and Emma's voices. They both had their arms resting on the bar top, their heads resting on top of those, and their ears pressed into their skin so that they faced one another. Shot glasses and beer bottles and cups littered the table around them.

Behind the bar, Killian was closing up shop. Washing dishes, wiping down surfaces, he had just about finished up. There was no way he was dirtying more glasses for yet another round of shots. He didn't care if he had to shoo them away with a broom, he would be out of here and closed up in ten minutes no ifs ands or buts about it.

"He said no more shots," Emma said to Regina despite the fact that brunette woman was sitting right next to her and had heard him the first time. Regina nodded glumly, her eyelids the heaviest they've ever felt.

"Beers?" Regina asked, her eyes shooting open in glee at the brilliant, according to her, loophole she'd found. Emma tilted her head to Killian and looked up to him with her best pleading eyes. Those things were lethal and she knew it.

He rolled his own and reached down into a tiny refrigerator underneath the bar. After a pop of the two tops, he held the bottles out, but refused to release his grip on them when both women had shot out their hands.

"I give you these and you leave," he warned in a tired, but good-natured tone. They nodded fiercely, their necks snapping up and down and the strands of their hair bouncing.

"Promise?"

"I promise with my entire heart," Regina said with her hand hovering in the air and her fingers clenching at the beer. He turned to Emma.

"I promise on my mother," Emma said as she, too, pinched the neck of the beer in Killian's hand.

Regina snapped her head to Emma, "don't say that!"

Emma shook her head, "I didn't mean it. I didn't. I just said it. "

A breath released out of Regina's chest, as if the weight of the world had just been lifted off of her. "Okay. Okay, good."

With the release of Killian's hand, the beers were split among the two and they clambered off the stools as promised. Regina swayed when her feet hit the ground and she looked at her shoes, which rubbed uncomfortably against her feet. A couple steps over to Emma's and she leaned on the blonde to take them off one at a time.

Holding them in her hands she wandered to the edge of the concrete and looked out to the beach. "Let's go out there," she said with the opening of the beer pointing off into the darkness.

Emma nodded, "Okay. I'll be right there," and off Regina went galloping and skipping and running and doing all those things she wouldn't be caught dead doing with a sober mind.

"You're in trouble, mate," Killian said to Emma who had lingered by the bar. Her eyes opened wide, dramatically wide, and she took a swig of beer as a testament that she agreed.

"I know," she gasped after her swig had been a couple seconds too long. "She's so pretty, Killian."

"And she's here for an entire week…." He trailed off, knowing full well that Emma only went for the women on the last leg of their vacation.

She wasn't a bad person, far from it, and she wasn't a player either, although she came off that way. In fact, it was the opposite. Last time Emma had gotten attached to a woman it'd taken her a month of solo sailing around in the ocean to find herself again. Ever since then she'd strayed from lasting relationships, deep relationships, anything nearing intimate, really. It was classic heartbreak syndrome if he'd ever seen it.

And he felt for her. He really did. They'd been friends for years and the entire time Emma had been nothing but great to him as well as everyone around her. Unfortunately, the world didn't seem to be as kind back.

"I know, but we're just friends." Emma said brightly. She seemed to have forgotten how upset she was just a second ago, how devastated she had been that the woman was so pretty.

He couldn't help but smile. Let her be drunk, he thought. Let her frollick around in the night harmlessly with an equally drunk woman.

A whoop escaped from the black of the night and bounced from the floor to the ceiling and back down to the floor. Emma turned to Killian as if he were her father, begging him to go out. He tilted his head with an affirmation he knew he really didn't have to give. She took it anyway and sprinted away, the soft thuds of her bare feet on the concrete disappearing when they sunk into the sand.

"Regina…" Emma called as she padded through the expansive white hills and valleys. When she neared the water she saw Regina standing there, the bottle dangling between her fingertips. She was still, her back to Emma, looking out at the ocean.

The moon shone on her and her body swayed as if she was dancing with the wind and Emma felt like a poet. She knew that if she was handed the right words, if she could just describe this scene before her in language that escaped her now, then she would touch a million hearts. Because if she could fill all those hearts with this image, nothing more, just the image, then they would be better off. She truly believed they would be better off.

If she were sober she probably would have stood there forever watching and committing it all to memory, but she was drunk and her feet wouldn't stop moving. Her feet never seemed to stop moving when she was drunk.

When she finally reached the brunette woman and stood beside her, Regina glanced over. She didn't smile, or frown, or do anything, really. She just looked at Emma, her face a soft mush of relaxed muscles and flesh.

"Robin cheated on me with that woman," she said before the bottle came up for a swig. Glug glug glug, the liquid drained into her throat. Emma nodded, she had figured as much. She wished she could take all the weight that stood on Regina's shoulders and throw it into an ocean. She wished she could just lock it up in a wooden chest and tie some chains around it like they do in movies and chuck it into the swelling abyss.

"She was my psychologist," Regina added.

Emma choked on her drink, coughing a few seconds after before she was able to breathe again. "What?"

"The Whore was my psychologist and she was screwing my husband between appointments. Can you believe that?" Regina slurred at the edges of the words, The Whore, like a tattered, well-read book. Her eyes drifted back into the ocean and latched onto a particular wave as it traveled in and slapped against the sand. She raised her beer for yet another sip, but Emma's hand stopped her.

"Are you kidding?" It came out like one rushed word.

"Not kidding."

"I'm going to kill her," Emma said with her lips in a flat line, her own eyes searching for a horizon that was invisible in the night.

Regina glanced over to her newly acquired friend and tightened her lips in a sort of smile, "you would do that for me?" She was being sarcastic and she knew it, but it felt better than the pain of being serious right now.

"I would," Emma said with her face still flat. If there was more moonlight on her face, or even a bit of sunlight, Regina would have noticed the twitching smile that was yearning to break free from Emma's stony regard, but in the conditions that stood, to Regina, it looked like she was deadly serious.

"Wait, Emma-" Regina's foggy brain faltered as it tried to separate joking and seriousness. Emma turned and threw her empty beer bottle down and began to walk back up the beach with her arms swinging.

Regina looked after her. If she could feel her body right now, she could imagine that everything would feel like it was seizing up. She wouldn't actually kill her, right? Because she didn't have the time to clean up a murder, she thought. She needed to get back to work immediately after this vacation, not worry about blood on her hands.

When she sprinted after Emma in a panic, just before she was able to reach out her hand, Emma whipped around threw Regina over her shoulders with an overdue smile shining through every feature in her face.

"You thought I was going to kill her?" Emma laughed and laughed and laughed. Regina's scream, which had been automatic in her shock transformed into giggling that floated through the air like a goddamn melody.

"You looked scary I didn't know," Regina justified with her head hanging upside down behind Emma's back, as if scary looking people always thought murder was okay.

"I'm scary? I'm scary!" Emma shouted into the wind as she twirled Regina around, her appendages flying.

"Ugh, Emma, put me down or I'm going to get sick on you."

It was amazing how fast those words could produce results from the blonde woman. Regina was down and back on her own two feet within seconds. They stared at each other as they struggled to rid the dizziness dancing behind their eyes.

When four heads became two and two finally became one, they stared at one another in renewed awe. Not because they both thought the other attractive, but because look at where they were: on a beach, in the middle of the night, with someone who had been considered a stranger just a day ago.

"You're not usually like this, are you?" Emma asked.

"Like what? Drunk?" Regina answered, her lips spreading to show perfect teeth. Perfect lips revealing perfect teeth.

"No," Emma chuckled, "like…" she waved her hand over Regina and struggled to find the words to describe what she meant. Amazing. Open. Spontaneous. Fun. Flirty. Charming. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.

Regina's smile faded a bit when she saw what Emma was getting at. "No," she confirmed. "I'm not usually like this."

"Why not?"

"Why?" To their drunk minds it was as good of an excuse as any. Emma searched desperately for an answer.

"Because of this," she finally came up with as she held out both arms as if she were presenting the beach and the sky and the moon all to Regina for her taking, as if they were presents she could give to her.

"All of this is not back where I live."

"Neither am I," Emma said for no reason at all. It was just something her stupid mouth had spit out and now she couldn't take it back. Nonetheless she peeked at Regina to see how she'd take it.

Layers of emotions passed over Regina's face like filters. They were all unrecognizable though, and only served to frustrate Emma.

"Neither are you," Regina said eventually. It came out flat and hard, bitter even, and Emma wondered if she'd just ruined everything. What she didn't know was that the bitterness was not directed towards her, but the truth.

Frankly, Regina was pissed at the truth because it seemed that the truth had only played the role of pain her entire life. It was truth that broke her heart, truth that took her confidence, truth that made her lonely. And it was truth that reminded her that Emma was not permanent or even long lasting.

In the scheme of things, Emma was a flash, a jolt, a blur of an object moving across her timeline at high speed. She was sure that if she blinked too slow or paused too long Emma would just disappear and leave her wondering if she'd even met the beautiful woman in the first place, or if it had all just been her imagination.

Frustrated and defeated and feeling hollow as hell, Regina lay down on the sand. Emma joined her because it was the right thing to do and because she wanted to and they both lay there staring up at a sky that should have had stars in it but didn't.

"Where are the stars?" Regina asked.

"On the other side of the island," Emma responded with a yawn. With a turn of her head, Regina looked to see if the blonde was serious. It appeared she was.

Emma returned her glance with a genuine nod, "really, they are."

"How is that possible?"

"I'll show you tomorrow."

Another yawn. Heavy eyes. A hand that had snuck dangerously close to another's.

Regina's head turned back up to the sky and squinted when she thought she might have seen a star twinkling behind a cloud, but no, it had just been a plane.

"How are they only on one side of the island?" Regina asked still searching for a star. She desperately needed to see a star. When she didn't receive an answer, she glanced over at Emma who had fallen asleep with her cheek pressed against the sand.

Regina traversed the peaks of Emma's cheekbones with her eyes, trailing her gaze along her lips, skimming curiously along her forehead, but she stopped there. It felt too easy to just look at the woman without any regard for how it would be taken by the subject of affection. She preferred the sneaking looks and flashing glances that they shared.

So out of fairness, as well as because of a newfound desire to finally sleep, she curled up next to the woman until their noses were just inches away and focused on the warmth that emitted from Emma's skin. Reality slipped farther and farther from her grasp with each passing second as the dream world begged her to pay a visit.

The last words that slipped out from between her lips disguised by a stream of air were, "you promise you'll show me tomorrow?"

And then there was only quiet.


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Another chapter! All your love is appreciated.**

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Regina never understood the whole concept of drifting awake, as if it were something that happened slow and gradual. She always watched women and men alike wake up in movies with an adorable nuzzle of their pillow, a soft smile, and fluttering eyelids and wondered if anyone in the entire world really greeted the day like that. God knows she didn't.

Waking up for her was like falling backwards on a chair, it came at her suddenly and with a sinking feeling in the deepest parts of her stomach.

A groan escaped her throat as the sun reached out its rays and pushed her back on that chair.

It hurt, all of it hurt.

"Agh," she squeezed her eyelids closed until they wrinkled. She maintained a belief that if she didn't open her eyes, none of it was real.

The sun, hot and sticky on her skin wasn't real. The sound of children screaming in the distance wasn't real. The sand that had crept underneath her clothes and into places she didn't really want to think about right now was not real.

A groan similar to her own sounded beside her and one eye opened reluctantly. Beside her lay Emma, blonde hair mussed and flipped all which way around her head, a pained look similar to her own on her face.

Eyes shut again. This was not real. This was not real. What had happened last night? God, this was so not real. Her sluggish brain and twisting stomach made it hard to remember.

She opened her eyes again and this time kept them open, looking in question at Emma whose face was still so close to her own.

"No," Emma grumbled before scrunching her nose, eyelids still resting shut.

"No what?" Regina voice came out gravely, partially because she had just woken up but also because she felt she had been rolled over by a bulldozer and the only way she'd be able to get up was by a giant scraping spatula.

"Nothing bad happened. We just passed out on the beach after the bar," Emma said.

Regina's body calmed a little, but only a little. The fact that nothing bad had happened only settled one portion of her spinning brain. The rest of it was still worrying and in so much pain.

A child ran up to them and stood over their sprawled out figures, blocking the sun from reaching their eyes and casting a shadow over their stomachs. Both women noticed the cool relief on their skin and the transition from glowing orange to a deep blue on the black of their eyelids, and yet neither one could find it within themselves to acknowledge the object, preferring instead to wallow in their own misery.

After awhile though, Emma gave in and whispered, "What is that?" with her cheek still pressed into the sand, her nose still inches away from Regina's, her eyes still rejecting the notion of being open.

"I think it's a kid."

"What's he doing?" Emma asked.

Regina continued to stare at Emma's mostly relaxed face. She tried her peripherals, but the boy was too far to the side of her to get anywhere with that. The thought of turning her head to look was too enormous of a task to even consider. "I don't know."

"Hey kid," Emma said louder. Cringes came from both women at the sound.

"What?" they heard down by their feet in a high-pitched voice.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm gong to bury you," the kid informed them, quite factually.

"No!" Regina said as she gathered the strength to sit up and face the kid. He was no older than five and held a shovel in his hand, ready to make good on his promise.

"Why don't you go back over there," she waved her hand away from them, anywhere away from them at this point.

Strangely enough, he shrugged and ran off. Regina released a thankful sigh. Crisis averted.

But now that she was up and looking around, she finally realized the sheer number of people that had taken residence around them on the beach. Umbrellas, towels, tents popped up straight from the ground. Underneath them people sat and lay tanning and reading and goofing around.

"Emma we have to get out of here," Regina said with a nudge to the woman's leg.

Emma whined, "why?"

Regina looked over and saw Emma's eyes still shut. She appreciated Emma's denial that the day was not going to begin if her eyes didn't open. Perseverance like that could come in handy from time to time.

"Because I want to do stuff today and you said you would show me," Regina tried. At first there was no response from the woman beside her. And even after that, there was still a lot of nothing.

Regina then heard Emma muttering under her breath, "8…9…" when she got to ten, the blonde woman scrambled up to her feet, swaying only a bit, and looking for only a few seconds like she was going to vomit.

She held out a hand for Regina and Regina took it, allowing herself to be heaved up and off the ground. With both of them standing, they looked like a sorry mess.

Sandy. Disheveled. Tired. Green-faced.

The way they shuffled back to the hotel up the beach, they appeared to have just escaped war and based on how they felt in the moment, they'd have to agree.

"Where do you live?" Regina asked out of curiosity as the sand gave way to hard concrete. Her burning calves felt a rush of relief at being able to walk on a surface that didn't slip and slide with each step.

"Oh you know, here and there," Emma responded as she walked up to the bar, which was now serving things like orange juice and fruit.

Regina screeched to a halt at the sight of the bar, but Emma encouraged her.

"Come on," she said with a wave of her hand before leaning over and ordering something from the two people standing behind it. Neither of them were Killian.

When Emma turned back with two glasses of green sludge, she held one out. "Bottoms up."

Regina eyed it hesitantly, but Emma remained resolute. Eventually, the brunette gave in and threw it back in a series of gulps. She thought about stopping midway, but from the way it smelled and the way it looked she didn't think she'd be able to start back up.

"Oh that's disgusting," she cried when she finally took a breath. Emma nodded and stared at her own empty glass.

"Yes. Yes, it is."

"What was in that?"

"Who knows."

"So why did you give it to me?"

"Just wait twenty minutes and you'll understand. That drink has the ability to burn through alcohol, make it just disappear, you know?"

Regina rolled her eyes. She'd believe it when she felt the difference. There were about a million hangover recipes and remedies, and the amount that actually worked were staggeringly small.

"Wait," Regina faltered when she played back the conversation they'd begun before the drink, "are you homeless?"

She asked it in a way that only a city-girl could have, pity and confusion laced within each word. For her, homeless meant dirty stuffed clothes and cardboard created houses and Emma certainly did not fit that description.

But Emma was too busy smiling and shaking her head to even wonder what nonsense was going through the Regina's brain. Vacationers from the mainland didn't really seem to understand the way of island living. They didn't understand that life was not defined by the collection of items they could gather and store into one permanent location.

"I have a home. I just choose not to stay there all the time."

"Don't you have a job you have to go to?"

Emma held out her arms, "I'm doing it right now. My official title is Hospitality Ambassador for the island."

Regina stared at her with one eyebrow raised, "seriously?"

"Seriously. Which means we might have to stop at a couple places today so I can check up on them, but other than that I'm all yours."

All yours.

All yours.

All yours.

It repeated in Regina's head long after. In fact, it repeated in such a loud internal loop that she had trouble forming other thoughts. So she resigned to followed Emma across the pool deck and the lobby and to the elevator silently while her head spun. Around and around in went, in search of the catalyst that had started it all.

Because there had to be a reason that she felt such a strong attraction to Emma, which meant there had to be a reason that Emma was so alluring, which meant that there had to be a reason that she suddenly felt an overwhelming and all-consuming desire to kiss the woman in front of her and never stop.

God, it was just such a mess. She felt like the tension between them was unbearable, and even worse she felt like Emma was oblivious to it all. The woman was just walking through the hotel casually like there was nothing pressing on her mind. It made Regina's skin feel itchy all over.

In conclusion: she was fucked.

"Can I shower at your place?" Emma asked as she leaned against the side of the elevator as it went up, up, up to Regina's floor.

"Uh huh," Regina mumbled out while staring intently at the ceiling and the walls and the floor and anything but Emma.

Correction: _now_ she was fucked.

Maybe she should have never drunk that green drink in the first place. Sure, it had worked and everything. In the walk through the hotel alone her conditions had improved. Her head had stopped pounding, her stomach had settled, her mouth didn't feel like a desert. But, with the cure came a drawback because now her body was active and ready, and desire didn't seem like such a far shot.

Bing.

The doors opened and Emma led the way. At first it confused Regina, but somewhere in her hazy memory of yesterday she remembered that Emma knew her room was the Garden Suite. So she followed and only stepped in front of Emma when she needed to use her card to open the door.

Once they were inside Emma walked straight to the kitchen and poured two glasses of water. It was strangely comforting to Regina and she took the glass of water with a sigh.

Emma took her glass and walked around the suite looking at various things. She was surprised they had redecorated since she'd last seen it. It was much brighter now, and the sun seemed to ricochet off the walls and explode up into the ceiling.

After skimming her hand along the new mahogany coffee table, she sat down on the couch and looked toward Regina. The woman had remained back at the breakfast nook and was playing around with a plant that sat on the countertop.

Her brown hair fell forward on one side of her face, on the other side it was pushed behind her ear. The whisperings of a smile ghosted over her lips, as if it was coming soon, or it had already been.

A few sips were taken from the glass, and Emma began to wonder how it was that they were both so comfortable in the silence that surrounded them. Comfortable silence seemed to be a trait that was developed over long periods of time, somehow their friendship had just been born with it.

Regina bit her lip and Emma found herself pushing up from the couch and walking towards the kitchen. She couldn't exactly say it was involuntary, she knew what she was doing, but somehow she just could not find it in herself to stop.

When she was on the other side of the breakfast nook, she placed her hands on the cold top and leaned forward.

That was when Regina looked up. She had been so lost in thought and distracted by replaying every minute of the day before in her mind in slow motion that she hadn't even noticed how long they had been silent or that Emma had gotten up from the couch and walked over to the kitchen with her.

"Do you have-"

"Do you want-"

They both stared at each other.

"What's your last name?" Emma asked.

"Mills." Regina answered slowly and awkwardly. It was a fair question; it just seemed so ridiculous that they didn't know these things about each other.

She already knew that Emma more often than not had a running inside joke with herself. She knew that the woman was willing to do a lot for someone she considered a friend, no matter how little she knew them. She knew Emma was beautiful, but didn't think so herself. At least, she knew she didn't understand her beauty to the extent it was.

And yet, she didn't even know her last name.

"Mine's Swan."

"Have you lived here your whole life?" Regina asked with a head tilt. She could do this. She could learn basic facts about the woman as if they were first meeting.

What she couldn't do was keep a straight face when Emma was damn near bursting out of laughter at her.

"What?!" Regina whined. Her face covered in red from embarrassment for a reason she didn't know.

"It sounds like we're on an awkward first date," Emma giggled with her hand smashed against her mouth, just like a teenager would.

"No it doesn't," Regina insisted, that red growing until it was deep in color and expansive in space.

"What's your favorite color," Emma asked as she slid around the breakfast nook until their elbows just barely touched.

Regina chuckled into the smooth surface of the table because Emma was sitting there and winking at her like some sixteen-year-old boy and it was beyond embarrassing (read: irresistible).

"Red," was eventually spit out and traded for "blue" from Emma. And once their favorite color was out there, all the hesitancy seemed to fall away.

Favorite food turned to favorite season, which morphed quickly into a description of a perfect day, and soon they were swapping facts and secrets like trading cards.

"Best time of day?" Emma asked from her seat on the breakfast nook. She'd hoisted herself up there a few questions in, and immediately after she knew it had been the right decision because Regina's eyes could not stop groping her in all the right places.

"One," Regina said.

"In the morning or at night?" Emma asked with eyebrows raised, her body a reflection of the stakes at hand, "this is important."

Regina bit her lip in thought. She knew the truth, but she also wanted to pick the answer Emma wanted. It was juvenile, but she wanted the woman to like her.

In the end, she told the truth. She figured that it would be much worse if she said something inconsistent to the lie later on. Also, if her answer ended up being different than Emma's at least they could fight about it. Banter was always fun.

"Morning."

"Yes! Thank you. You get it." A rush of relief flooded Regina's body when Emma held her hands up to the ceiling in two clenched fists of celebration.

"Of course I get it, the world is so different at that hour," Regina said with a huff of satisfaction.

"So different. It's so peaceful… but also louder at the same time. Does that make sense?" Emma leaned forward on her hands as she sat on the countertop, cursing the distance between she and Regina.

"Complete sense," Regina responded with a smile so soft it would be hard to catch if you weren't really paying attention. Of course, Emma was.

In fact, Emma was not only paying attention, she was sliding off the countertop, her bare feet hitting the ground with a tiny thud. She was standing in the space between the two countertops. She was staring at Regina's eyes, which were staring at her.

"I've never actually met anyone that's agreed with me before," Regina added breathlessly as she watched Emma's body descend onto the same level as hers, each individual muscle in her arms flexing to lower herself down onto the flow.

Three steps is all they needed until they would be standing exactly in the middle of where they were standing now, together, nose to nose, lips to lips?

"Me either," Emma said as she took that first step. Both of their eyes were flicking down to one another's lips, subtlety was no longer an option to either of them in that moment.

Regina wanted to take that next step, she really did. With her eyes on Emma, she willed her feet to take that goddamn step, but they wouldn't.

It was all so uncharted, all so new. She didn't even know where to start.

Thankfully, Emma took that second step for her, confidently, assured, and with her eyes pinned on the one thing she wanted most.

And then, when there was only only one step remaining, one tiny fraction of a step that was made only of breathy sighs and beating hearts, sweaty palms and delicious aches, a knock sliced through the air.

Their heads turned, their hearts stopped and they stared toward the direction of the door. The knock came again, two knocks to be precise, in a swift tap tap.

"I should get that," Regina whispered.

"Or we could…not?" Emma reached up and thread her hands in Regina's hair just to the side of her face. It was a gentle movement, but to Regina its effects were like a punch to the gut.

With a tilt of her head back, and eyes on Emma's lips, Regina's voice came out shaky, "what are we doing?"

The knock on the door sounded again, but this time neither pairs of eyes even glanced toward it.

"I have no idea," Emma said, her eyes flicking from one of Regina's eyes to the next. She looked terrified. Filled with lust, yes, but also terrified.

A fourth knock.

It was the persistency of the knocking that made Emma wonder what it was the people outside that door could want. Something important. Something she could give less of a damn about.

But Regina's hands were trembling and her lip with was being teased between her teeth and her frightened eyes put Emma at a pause, and made her question her movements. With Emma, questioning herself was possibly the worse thing she could do.

Did Regina really want this? Was the woman going to freak out on her? The thought of losing the friend she'd only just gained seemed unbearable. The fact that she felt so strongly about something so new left her terrified.

The knock. A fifth knock. Emma looked at the woman before her, the woman that was staring at her like she was the sun.

"I'll be right there," echoed from lips that regretted it immediately. Thick fog made up of a moment missed expanded throughout the air until both women were damn near suffocating.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: This one's a short one, hopefully you won't mind ;)**

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Brown hair, thick with shampoo, hung behind Regina's head while soapy water swirled around the drain in a foam. Her hands soon followed through the strands from roots to tips, teasing out knots wringing out stubborn slick areas. The steam filled the air of the bathroom so heavily, Regina felt like she was standing in a cloud.

She turned the handle behind her a quarter inch until the water became even hotter than it already was. Tanned skin morphed red, and the cells simultaneously sighed and cringed at the stinging heat. When stress seemed to bully relentlessly, scalding hot showers were just one of those things for her.

Some people drank, some people smoked, Regina took showers with water so hot, her skin protested angrily.

She didn't exactly know why she did it. Most likely it had something to do with allowing the water to evaporate the tension right out of her. Or maybe she just wanted the warmth to loosen her muscles, and took it a little too far? Who knows. Whatever the reason, it helped to calm Regina, and right now, she so desperately needed to be calmed.

She and Emma had almost kissed.

Correction: Emma had almost kissed her and she had been too afraid to seal the deal.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

With a step back, she angled the water so it ran down her face. Tightly, her eyelids, nose, and mouth squeezed shut tight. A low growl of frustration came from the back of her throat as she played back what had happened just a half an hour earlier.

Emma had been inches away from her. In fact, they had been so close that a soft breeze could have blown her forward just the tiniest bit, and she would have collided with Emma's lips. But no, of course that had not happened. Instead, the fucking knocking would not cease, and whether it was the persistency of the door, or maybe it was something else. Maybe Emma was off put or confused by Regina's hesitancy. Anyway, the point was, Emma had gone to answer the door.

The second Regina felt the rush of air made by Emma's fleeing, she knew the opportunity that was once there, would never be placed so delicately in her hand again.

As it turned out, new clothes for Emma were waiting by the door. By then, the person who had delivered them had given up and just left them sitting against the doorframe.

When Emma plopped them on the table and began sorting through them, it finally struck Regina as odd. How did a person know to deliver Emma clothes? Why did they have Emma's clothes? How did they know she was here?

There were so many questions and regretted decisions and she felt herself becoming more and more tightly wound, so she had fled to the shower with a squeak that meant to say something like, "shower time" and wave over her shoulder.

And so here she was, allowing the water to run over her painfully and beating herself up in the process. It had already been twenty minutes at least, maybe thirty. She knew she was going to have to get out eventually, but the thought of facing Emma again was already making her stomach turn.

With the conditioner out of her hair, and her feet starting to prune, she finally relented and decided to just get it over with. It was going to happen eventually, may as well not prolong the inevitable

With a determination she wished she'd had when it came to the kiss, she turned off the water and climbed out of the shower, wrapping herself tightly with a towel.

She stared at the silver handle and with a deep breath yanked it open.

Of course, Emma was sitting in the living room when she did open the door, and of course, the living room had a perfect view of the bathroom door, and of course they made eye contact the minute she emerged.

The steam that had been gathering and swirling in the bathroom poured out and licked the ceiling as it dissipated and Regina wished she had the power to evaporate into steam and float out the room with it.

With eyes wide, and a gaze that did not falter, Emma opened her mouth. At first nothing came out, so the blonde woman tried her throat again, begging it not to fail her twice. "Hi," she said on her second try, which she realized was just the stupidest thing that could have came out of her mouth.

"Hey," Regina said back, and already, the tension that had taken twenty minutes to work its way out in the heat was slithering back into her muscles.

They stared at one another for much too long and finally something in Regina snapped. This was ridiculous.

She was woman,

a powerful woman,

a beautiful woman,

a woman with ambition,

a woman who got what she wanted, because more often than not she deserved it.

And so Regina rolled her eyes, and took several long, swift steps toward Emma. When she was she was just three steps away though, she stopped.

Her self-confidence, which had begun burning so strong, had dissipated in the trip across the room and now she was running on the wisp of leftover smoke.

Thankfully, Emma acknowledged Regina's intentions and smiled in a way that said 'it's okay'.

She took a step.

Emma knew with this woman, if she needed her too, she would always take the first step. And even the second step, and the third step if she needed that. She had no idea what it was about Regina, but she was hooked. In the day and a half they'd known each other, Emma could acknowledge that once the woman returned home after her vacation, she'd be missed and she would not be forgotten.

Regina didn't need Emma for all three steps though, only the one. And once that step was taken, she felt the flame of confidence flicker awake.

Step two,

step three,

and then it was all over.

For some, a kiss is a summation. It's feelings and thoughts and tension wrapped in a box and tied with a bow. It's clinking teeth that put passion before comfort and grazing lips that appreciate a slow burn. It's 'hello', it's 'goodbye', it's 'how are you doing?' It's the messiness of the universe boiled down into one, single physical testament.

But even after all that, there was still no way to describe what Emma and Regina were feeling as they reached for each other to get closer closer closer.

The kiss that they shared wasn't the conclusion of something that had already happened, it was an explosion of beginning. The universe that should have been shrinking down was expanding infinitely in consecutive sonic booms.

Fingertips grazed along a spine before flattening and pulling close. Boom.

A hand disappeared in hair and nails scraped scalp. Boom

Pale lips turned pink and then red as they tried to taste each and every word that had been formed by the other, as they tried to convey each and every word they themselves had spoken. Boom.

The quietest whimper came out from a throat and neither could be sure who had made it. Boom.

Tongues offered more. Boom.

Teeth teased. Boom.

Hips pressed together so tightly it would be a miracle for them to ever separate again.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

It was the sort of kiss that made them wonder if anything they knew before would still stand once they broke apart. And the thing is, it scared the hell out of them because it was so absolutely, incredibly ridiculous.

And because of its ridiculousness, rather than continuing it forever, they broke apart and stared at each other in a state of awe because the world they had once knew was now destroyed, utterly destroyed, and there was no going back.

Still staring at each other, words bubbled up in Emma's throat because she felt obligated to somehow express what she had just felt, but at the same time she knew those words would ruin it.

"Wow," was the best she could come up with.

She was right. Words did ruin it.

"I-" Regina couldn't even get far enough to shatter the illusion from her end.

"I should take a shower," Emma said after that because what else could she say?

If she could have come up with a way to tell the brunette woman that the kiss they just shared had ruined her life in the best way possible, she would have. But pretty women don't often react well to being told they are a life-ruiner, so she held her tongue and opted for the next best option, which was apparently, "I should take a shower."

"I should get dressed," is how Regina responded. Which only caused them both to look down, a flood of warmth covering their cheeks at the realization that their bodies had been smashed together while Regina was only in a towel. It seemed like a thing that wouldn't have been able to slip by unnoticed, but they had been too busy with each other's lips that the rest had been put on hold.

Something they both regretted heavily now.

"Okay." Emma said, her feet rebelling her words and remaining stuck in the ground.

"Okay."

"So I'll go get clean and you'll go get…." Emma's eyes traveled down and then up as they moved on their own accord.

"Dressed," Regina breathed out.

"What?"

"Dressed," Regina repeated, "I'm gong to get dressed."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

They allowed themselves one more moment of suspension before they turned and headed to their respective rooms. Once alone, both of their chests heaved up and down. Regina looked at herself in the mirror, Emma rest the back of her head against the wall, a groan came from both of them as the crashing reality dive-bombed into them.

Regina was on vacation for 8 days. Emma lived on the island all year round. On an average day, there was a grand total of 4,500 miles between them.

Another groan from each of them.

They were screwed.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Another chapter!**

**I also just want to say something to all those readers out there: you're awesome.**

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Regina tapped her fingers on the breakfast nook countertop like a snare drum, her ring finger thudding down first, then her middle, then her forefinger. Again and again and again while she waited for Emma to get off the phone.

The blonde had been talking animatedly to someone on the end for nearly ten minutes after she swore it would only be a second. At first it sounded like she was talking to a friend, the way she laughed into the receiver, but now the conversation had shifted and only consisted of phone numbers and repeated addresses.

For no reason really, Regina looked down at the table. The granite that lay out beneath her arms looked only like a smatter of shapes fitted together in unison, like earth's checkerboard or something. Upon closer glance, she realized there were flecks of iridescence, flecks of black, flecks of white and they all pooled together into a surface that took every possible wavelength of light and flung it in a different direction. She ran a finger over the smooth surface as if that could somehow help the rock understand her appreciation.

"Regina." Regina blinked a few times as the world she'd just been in faded, and the world in front of her became clearer. A smiling woman, a gorgeous smiling woman was standing in front of her.

"Emma," Regina responded automatically. She liked the way the woman's name sounded in her voice.

"How attached are you to sleeping in this suite tonight?"

A chuckle burst out Regina's two closed lips in a 'pew' sound, "a little presumptuous, are we?"

Emma's face pinkened and Regina mentally patted herself on the back for finally being to say something intelligent and flirty. Ever since she'd met the woman, she'd been so tongue-tied that she barely recognized herself.

Gone was the seductive woman who could win over men with words alone. Instead, she was a bumbling, awkward, drunk woman with a stupid teenage crush on another woman in which she did not understand.

But maybe, just maybe, with the we-shall-not-discuss-it kiss out of the way, she would regain her powers. God, she hoped.

"No, that's not it. I just have a better idea."

"What did you have in mind?" Regina asked, feeling only a little bad for embarrassing the woman as much as her cheeks made evident.

"I can't tell you, it's a surprise," Emma said a little too loud.

Regina brought the hand which had been tapping on the countertop, to her mouth and she hummed into her open palm. "Do you think I'll like it?"

"I don't know you all that well." The way Emma said it, it was clear that there was some regret there, maybe some disappointment. Whatever it was, Regina felt the same.

"You already know me better than some people I've been friends with for years," Regina admitted, because it was true. She had a horrible habit of settling for shallow friendships that gave her nothing but sheer company for dinners and night outs and trips to the theater.

Emma's eyes lit up a bit, "I do?"

"Yeah, you do."

"Alright," a soft sigh came out of Emma. She nodded, "then yes, I think you'll like it."

"Then okay."

"Okay," Emma smiled wide and opened the suite's front door behind her. She held it open as Regina walked through it and tried her best to not stare at the long tan legs that waltzed past her.

Even harder than that, she tried not to stare at the eyes that were staring at her, the eyes that knew full well the effect those long tan legs were having on Emma.

Emma began to wonder at what moment exactly Regina had decided to take control of the dynamic between them. It'd happened very recently, around when she was on the phone, but it was happening nonetheless and she needed to catch up. Pronto.

They walked down the hall and Emma waved to people as if she was staying there herself and Regina found herself liking it. Robin had always come off so…she couldn't come up with the word. It' wasn't that he was aggressive, it was just that he didn't exactly seem sincere and people seemed to be able to smell insincerity from a mile away. But Emma. Emma oozed a genuine air that affected almost everyone around her, including Regina. Plus, it was nice not to explain why it was you were hanging out with a person that seemed awful.

"So you're really not going to tell me where we're going?" Regina asked as she sped up to walk next to Emma. Somehow in her oogling, she'd fallen just a step or two behind.

"Mm, nope." One mischievous grin followed.

"Please?" One mischievous grin faltered. Emma was already putty in Regina's hands.

"How about we play twenty questions?" Emma offered.

Regina tilted her head from side to side. She'd take what she could get, "deal."

The two of them put their game on pause as the sliding doors to the front of the hotel opened wide for them. Emma glanced to the right for something and Regina held out her keys.

"I rented a car."

Emma shook her head, "we're gonna need something more specific for this adventure."

Silver keys returned to Regina's pocket and the brunette joined Emma in the search for something still unknown. Eventually, Emma spotted what she was looking for and jogged a few steps forward, her neck craning.

When she looked back, she saw Regina standing there waiting and waved her on. The brunette's face lightened at her hand wave. Not exaggeratedly, not like a-walk-into-a-surprise-party way, but in a slow and steady sort of way that started in the lips and moved to the eyes.

Side by side, the blonde felt a strange sensation in her palm. She clenched her fist shut when she realized what it was. Her hand was literally itching to grab the brunette's.

She sighed, apparently now she had no control of her body either. With firm pressure, she kept the clenched fist to the side. It wasn't the right time, but she promised herself she would eventually. No, she could do better than that. Sometime today, she would. That promise alone sent a jolt of adrenaline through her system.

"Oh no," Regina whined as she saw what they were walking towards. It was a yellow jeep, no doors, no roof, no windows, just a shell of a car ready to rip through the hills.

"Oh, yes," Emma said as she dug the key chain and clicked it twice to unlock it.

Beep. Beep.

The sound alone made Emma bounce with excitement. With movements clearly done a million times before, she swung herself into the drivers seat and grabbed some sunglasses from the dashboard. Regina remained standing next to the car, staring at it, imagining just how knotted her hair was about to get.

"Come on you," Emma said with her one arm resting on the steering wheel, her wrist bent over it.

"But…"

"Regina," Emma began in an authoritative voice before stopping and whispering, "what's your middle name?"

Regina's smile turned crooked and she ran a hand through her hair, which was already blowing from the wind. Without another word, she walked around the car and got into the passenger seat.

"Wow, it's that easy? I was ready to threaten you with your full name and everything."

"Nope, not necessary," Regina said as she reached into a compartment in the front and grabbed a pair of Emma's sunglasses before putting them on her face as well.

The car started up, and both the stereo and engine filled the air with noise. Good noise though. Noise that made them feel like they were about to cruise through paradise without a care in the world like in the movies.

Rolling forward, Emma drove with one hand on the wheel and one resting on the gear shift, "so you're not going to tell me you're middle name, are you?"

Brown eyes faced forward, watching as the pavement of the parking lot fell away to a dirt road that she hadn't drove on before. That smile, that glowing up smile Emma had been thinking about in the parking lot, was still on her face.

"Sounds like second date information to me."

Emma tilted her head back just a bit and laughed into the wind, which carried it away effortlessly, "ah, so this is a date?"

"It is what you want it to be," Regina responded.

It was careful, it was cautious, and it left no blame on her.

Don't get her wrong. She wanted Emma. In ways she didn't even know yet, she wanted Emma. But she was also rational. And smart. And yes, maybe, a little guarded. Sue me, she thought as she wrestled with herself. Sue me for not wanting to fall head first for a woman I'm only going to be with for seven days.

"Then it's a date."

Fuck, Regina almost muttered to herself. She was a goner.

"Good," was what Regina said out loud, her eyes squinting at the challenge and her head leaning towards Emma's in between their seats.

"Good," is what Emma said back once they were at a stop light. She met Regina in the middle of their seats until their faces were just a few inches away, all the while challenging one another with their eyes.

"Just make out already!" is what they heard someone shout from the car next to them.

Both heads turned to see Killian driving in the right lane. When he saw Regina he smiled a toothy grin, "remember me?"

Regina groaned at the drunken flashbacks that came from looking at the man, "unfortunately."

"Ouch! Come on, it's my job."

"You on your way to get what I asked?" Emma shouted as her eyes flicked from Killian's car to the stop light, which was on the verge of turning green.

"Aye, aye, captain," he shouted with a salute before gunning his car forward at the shift of the light. Emma shook her head and followed, but slower, much slower. His car bounced in and out of lines like a hyperactive rabbit, like a very spastic, hyperactive rabbit. She was more of a smooth and steady kind of girl.

"What is he supposed to pick up?" Regina asked when she twisted back to face forward.

"So!" Emma said much too loud, evading the question completely, "how about that twenty questions we were going to play?"

Regina rolled her eyes, "Fine. But if I don't get it in ten questions, then you just have to tell me."

"But it's called twenty-" Emma glanced over to Regina who was giving her a stern look, she held up both hands from the steering wheel and laughed, "fine, fine."

Regina hit Emma on the arm and Emma dropped her hands back on the wheel.

"Hands on the wheel! Are you trying to kill me?"

"First date and she's already nagging me about my driving," Emma said with a roll of her eyes. Except, she was awful at pretending she didn't love it because she did. She loved it so much.

"I wouldn't have to if you just drove with two hands like a normal person."

"Oooookay. First question!" Emma said in a way that made Regina feel like she was already in a committed long-term relationship. Surprisingly, she liked the feeling.

"Does it involve the stars?" Regina asked while she gathered her hair with both her hands behind her head. She kept trying and failing to contain all the strands that whipped around her face into a small ponytail.

"Nope."

"No?" Regina asked just as she'd twisted her hair tie the last time around her hair. Her face was one of sheer disappointment.

"That's later. Not first though."

"Oh, okay," an unspoken 'phew' spread across Regina's face. "Does it involve a beach?"

"We will be going to the beach, but does the activity involve the beach? Nah." Excitement crept up on Emma as she watched Regina filter through the options of what they could possibly be doing.

"Is it a sport?"

"Yeah, I guess you could call it that," Emma said as she thumped her fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the song that was playing.

The road had freed up considerably in the past ten minutes and now they were cruising, the ocean following them to the left with each dip and turn. Emma tended to stay towards the edge of the island most days. She was well aware of the vast forest in the middle, but the minute she started heading away from that endless blue, she started to feel claustrophobic.

"Am I going to get wet?" The words came out of Regina's mouth before she could stop them, something that seemed to happen endlessly in the past couple days. The only difference was that this time she didn't catch the innuendo she'd just offered up.

"Well, that seems entirely up to you," Emma answered with as straight of a face as she could manage. Too bad her efforts didn't stop the corners of her mouth though, those twitched away with no sign of stopping.

Regina, now aware, of what she had _really_ just said glanced over at the blonde, her smile widening until her teeth shone. For some reason, she wasn't embarrassed as she imagined she would have been with any other person. Instead, she just chuckled contently and kind of nudged Emma in her side.

"Oh, shut up," she said, but her giggling didn't cease until many moments later. "Anyway, next question, hm…"

"No more questions," Emma said suddenly.

"Why not?"

"Cause we're here."

The engine and the music cut, and Regina realized that they had not only gotten off the road, but that they had parked in a lot bordering a beach that was absolutely swarming with people.

Not tourist people though, real island people. There was a difference, Regina could tell. The way they dressed, the way they moved. There was definitely a difference and Emma seemed to embody it all.

Emma hopped down from the car and scanned the place known as Beehive Beach. It was her favorite place on this side of the island, always had been. She had fond memories of when she was younger, sprinting through the sand from sunrise until sunset in a pair of shorts and a rash guard that simultaneously prevented burns from the sand and the sun.

"What is this place?" Regina asked, as she stayed close to Emma. She was aware that she didn't exactly belong in this hub of island culture, and she didn't know what was going to happen when everyone else figured it out.

"Beehive Beach. I practically lived here as a kid."

"Do all these people live here? On the island?" Regina asked as crossed the boundary from pavement to sand.

"Yeah, most of them are locals," Emma said as she sought out the man she was looking for. When she did she raised her hand, for he had been looking for her, too. His eyes widened when he saw her and waved her over.

The two women threaded between the people walking and carrying kids and skateboarding until they got to a man with long shaggy hair that fell down next to his face. He held a cane in his hand that he limped along the sand with.

"Emma!" He said as if they were close friends, but made no move to hug or shake the woman's hand.

"Hey there. Haven't seen you in a while."

"Oh, I've been around," he responded with a shrug. He turned to Regina and his eyebrows rose. "I see you've got a friend with you?"

Regina watched Emma carefully; curious to see how she would respond. This man obviously seemed to be a friend of hers, and yet, he appeared to be very shocked that she had a woman with her.

"I do," Emma responded as she raised a hand up to her neck and rubbed it nervously.

Regina wasn't sure if nervousness was a good sign or a bad sign, but she took a deep breath and held out her hand. "I'm Regina."

The man took it and chuckled, "that you are. You on vacation here?"

"I am," Regina squared her shoulders and ran a hand through her hair. She wasn't sure what this man wanted from her, but some way, she knew there was a test involved and she wasn't going to fail.

"And how long have you known Emma?" He asked, his smile twisting into something unrecognizable.

"Hey, Rumple," Emma interjected, "she's with me. She's my guest." She raised a hand to the man's shoulder and squeezed it a bit as if to say 'it's fine' and all of the sudden everything that he was holding onto was released. His entire body relaxed.

"Okay. Well if you're a friend of Emma's, you're a friend of mine. But, Emma, you might want to localize her a bit or you're going to send the sharks into a feeding frenzy," he twisted the cane between both of his hands as a divot formed in the sand. The lack of resistance didn't stop him though; he just kept twisting and twisting.

Emma inspecting each item of Regina's clothing. Rumple was right. The woman was gorgeous and dressed nicely, but she looked utterly out of place here. She would have to do something like that. She needed to make it clear, Regina was with her, not some free agent roaming around the beach.

"I'll fix her up, don't worry," Emma said as she steered Regina down the beach and away from the man by the shoulders.

Regina craned her head around to face Emma, "what did he mean localize me? And what did he mean by feeding frenzy?"

Emma smiled as she and Regina strolled down the beach next to fruit vendors and bracelet makers and the occasional old man strumming on some string instrument. Before she could answer Regina, she stopped at a stand that was selling clothes hanging on long silver racks. The thin material blew in the wind, filling the air with a rainbow of colors.

Regina kept walking though, unaware that Emma had stopped. Emma reached out and grabbed the brunette's hand and pulled her back and as she did Regina felt a jolt snake up her arm from her palm. Emma felt it, too.

"Right here," Emma pushed out. She would need to work on making contact with the brunette and speaking. As of right now, she could only manage one at a time.

They dropped hands just because and almost instantly, their palms felt the absence in the form of cool air.

"What's right here?" Regina asked as she surveyed the clothing.

"Here is where we're going to localize you," Emma said, still a little shaken up from the hand holding incident, if you could even call that an incident. With Regina the littlest things seemed to be incidents. It was ridiculous. She was acting ridiculous. "We need to give you a makeover."

Regina looked down at her clothes, which her damn nice clothes if you asked her. "What's wrong with my outfit?"

"You look beautiful, but you look like a tourist."

"You can't just tell me I'm beautiful so that I'll do what you want me too," Regina said with her arms crossed and her lip being teased between her teeth. It seemed that her words were speaking a different language than her body.

"But did it work?"

A pause. A long pause.

"….just this time."

Emma smiled and began to flip through the racks. Regina reluctantly joined her and once they had covered every inch of cave created by hung up clothes, they held out their findings.

In Emma's hands there was a long maxi skirt made of thin blue linen. Regina held up a white tank top with thin straps that would hang loose and cover little. It was her version of revenge. If the blonde was going to make her change her clothes to fit in with a crowd, then she was going to make her wish she they were alone the entire time.

"Good," Emma gulped as she took in the shirt. "You can change in there. I'll attempt to pay."

"Oh, no. I can pay," Regina insisted.

"Good luck with that," Emma said with a shrug. Let the woman try, she thought.

Regina thought it was strange but shrugged and head over to the woman sitting at a table. She held out some money that refused to lay flat, instead bending with the breeze.

The woman behind the table wore a long dress of the most vibrant orange, her hair was rolled into dreads that stuck up from every angle. She glanced at the money, and then behind her at Emma and shook her head. "No, no. It's free. Have a good day!"

Regina scrunched up her face and glanced behind her at the woman she was sure was going to have an I-told-you-so look on her face. Emma offered nothing in response though, just pointed to a small tent that acted as a makeshift changing room.

Changing in a six by six tent ended up being harder than Regina thought, and by the time she had successfully swapped clothing, she needed space and air desperately. With a dramatic burst, she exited through the curtain of heavy material that had given her privacy just minutes ago and collided right into Emma.

Hands on each of Regina's shoulders, Emma took a step back and looked down at the new outfit Regina wore. It was so much different than the tailored shorts and shirt that she had been wearing before. A good different though. A great different, actually.

"Look at you," Emma all but whispered.

"Look at me," Regina answered just as quiet, immediately thrust into a world where only they existed.

"I think…" Emma began, but stopped short when the wind seemed to snatch the words right out from her throat.

"What?"

"Nevermind," Emma recovered and shook the haze out of her head. "Nevermind," she repeated with a nervous laugh. "Ready to go?"


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: Ha HA! Surprise! Double update day. The sun was shining, it finally feels like spring, so I figured, you know, why not?**

* * *

The amount people rushing around them diminished as they moved toward the water where the sand was firm and dark from the early morning tide. Noise around them faded until there was only a quiet murmur in the background. Every once and awhile the remnants of a tune would drift all the way out toward them, but other than that, it was mostly quiet.

"What did that man mean by feeding frenzy?" Regina asked now that she finally had Emma alone and without another excuse to dodge the question.

"I don't really want to…" Emma dragged her toes in the sand with each step. Her shoes swung in her in her hand.

"Emma."

Emma hated how all the brunette had to do was say her name like that and she'd obey. Muffled rumbles materialized in Emma's chest as she fidgeted and looked around and searched for a way to avoid the question.

"Well, you know, you're a tourist," Emma said as normally as she could, but Regina could already tell she was uncomfortable. It was weird how she could already tell that from such minute movements from the blonde.

"That's correct."

"And we're mostly locals," Emma continued, her voice dragging in hopes that Regina would put together the pieces without her saying it out loud.

"Yeah…"

"And tourists are usually only here for a little bit of time…" God, Emma just wanted Regina to get it. She really _really_ didn't want to say it.

"Emma, what are you trying to say?"

"Well, uh…"

"Just say it…" Regina prodded.

"Locals often look to tourists for a quick hook up with no strings attached. You're beautiful, they see you as a quick lay. Easy sex equals feeding frenzy." It all came tumbling out of Emma before she could stop it and she clamped her jaw shut as soon as she gained control of it once again.

"I see," Regina snapped.

Walls down. Face flat. Shoulders squared.

There she was. There was the Regina that lived in New York City and worked seventy hours a week.

"But I don't," Emma insisted. She knew this was going to happened once she said it. Stupid. She knew it. Stupid. Why did she say it like that? Stupid.

"I'm not asking anything from you, Emma. You don't owe me anything. You can tell me the truth, I'm just a quick way to get off." Regina said with a huff. For some reason she now felt incredibly silly in the clothes she was wearing.

"I used the code!" Emma cried out. Regina turned to the blonde, surprised to see just how exasperated she was.

"Code?" Regina's voice wavered. It was difficult pretending she didn't care about the blonde. She had enough time convincing herself she didn't feel a connection to her, and now she had to pretend it didn't matter to her if she was a one-night stand for Emma. Well, technically it would be two-night stand, but still.

"Rumple, back there, that man, I told him you were my guest."

Regina's forehead wrinkled. Was that supposed to mean something to her?

Emma huffed in frustration with herself. She tried to explain. "There's a code for the people that live here, saying 'she or he is my guest' means that you care for that person, that it's not just for sex or for casual companionship. It means that by unofficial law the locals must accept that person as a local of the island as well. It means hands off, essentially."

Regina's mouth opened a bit. That's what happened when her brain was moving so fast, she lost control of other aspects of her body, in this case, her jaw hinge.

"Emma, we've known each other for a day and a half…" She said it to protect herself, because knowing that Emma felt at least the connection she felt was almost worse than thinking she was alone in it.

Emma ran her hands through her hair in distress. "I know!" She pressed her lips together and looked out to the ocean, her jaw muscles spasming. "I know."

A pang materialized in Regina's chest in ricocheted around her rib cage. Why, oh, why did she have to jump to such conclusions? Why, oh, why did she have to protect herself to fiercely?

They walked for exactly fifty-two steps in silence. Inside though, both of their brains were whirling.

A few times during the quiet, Regina opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out, nothing coherent at least. Instead, a sigh would release, or a huff, but no words.

The problem was, she was afraid. She could admit it. It was situations like these were Robin had ruined her because he would always say something sweet, and she would return the sentiment, and then she'd find out later he never meant it.

Or, once she started to catch on that he was using romantic one-liners to avoid a fight, or get what he wanted, she would refuse to answer his flattery. And after he received no benefit in return, he'd take it back. He's say something hurtful like, "you think I meant that? Ha."

And because of that, she was convinced, so utterly convinced that was what Emma was doing now. So she was just waiting for the blonde woman to get frustrated with Regna's lack of reciprocation of feelings so she would then say something like, "Oh, yeah. I was just kidding."

The only problem was that after fifty steps in silence she had not done so and Regina was beginning to get nervous that she was waiting for something that wasn't going to happen.

When Emma did finally speak, Regina's heart leapt and dropped at the same time. She knew that wasn't exactly possible, but that's how it felt.

"I think you're my ichi-go ichi-e," Emma said as she stopped walking and turned toward Regina.

Regina stopped also. Well, she was not expecting _that_ to come out of Emma's mouth.

"Your what?"

"My ichi-go ichi-e. It's a Japanese idiom. It's not really translated well into English, but I met this guy once and he described it to me as a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It means, "for one time only" or "never again". You can, uh, you can use it for a certain event or thing that happened once that can never be repeated."

Emma glanced at Regina who seemed to be confused. She sighed, but trudged on, trying desperately to get out what she needed to, "but I always thought of it as a thing that happened between people. My whole life I've imagined that we each got one extraordinary person that we'd collide with in life once. Just one time, and after that it would never happen again. And you had to decide to either take that one time and run with it as far as you can, or watch it pass you by and go on living."

Another glance towards Regina. Emma couldn't read her face, but it had relaxed. At least, she didn't look so confused.

"I guess what I'm trying and failing to say is that with you I'm gong to run with it, and if you decide to walk away that's fine, that's totally fine, but I need to at least see where this goes."

Now the ball was rolling and Emma couldn't stop. If she was going to run with it, she may as well fucking sprint.

"And we can be friends or we can be more or I can just be your tour guide I really don't care, but I'm here. For whatever reason, I'm here."

Regina was staring at Emma now, not even looking, just blatantly staring. She wasn't even sure she was breathing anymore. She couldn't pay attention to anything except the woman in front of her.

"I'm sorry if that's creepy. I know we've only known each other a little and I'm not trying to be creepy, but it's a feeling you know? Or maybe you don't. But it's a feeling for me."

Desperately, Regina wished she could have saved Emma some painful stumbling by stopping her earlier, but she couldn't. She wasn't kidding when she said she was frozen.

"Could you say something at least?" Emma pleaded.

"No," Regina said and she hadn't meant it to be cruel, she was just juggling so many thoughts and answers to Emma's confession that it had just come out first. Unfortunately.

"Fuck" Emma muttered as she looked out the ocean, her face suddenly feeling burning hot.

"No, not no," Regina tried but it was only getting worse.

"Not no?"

Regina cut her losses and grabbed Emma by the thin straps of the tank top she was wearing, pulled her close, and kissed her.

It was a simple kiss. A lips pressed against lips kind of kiss. It was all Emma needed.

They pulled away with grins, relieved that their lack of eloquence had not completely ruined them yet.

"No, I do not want to be _just_ friends," Regina said clearly. It seemed that kissing Emma was always the case for her tied tongue. She should probably just do that more often.

"Me either," Emma sighed in relief.

"But I do leave in seven days," Regina reminded her. Damn that rational brain.

"I know."

"So we'll just see what happens day by day?"

"Day by day," Emma nodded. She could do that. She could definitely do that.

"Good."

"And I won't pressure you don't worry. I'm not actually clingy or anything all that stuff just came o-"

"Emma?"

"Yeah?"

"Just kiss me again. It tends to help with the rambling"

Emma smiled and slipped a hand around the smallest part of Regina's waist. With a tug, she pulled her flush to her own body, "I can do that."


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Enjoy, enjoy!**

* * *

They walked for a while down the beach, talking and laughing, their eyes only on each other. In fact, it wasn't until the ocean nipped at their feet that Regina realized that all those people strolling and hanging around around them had disappeared. It was only her and Emma now.

Well, them and an older woman walking a dog up the beach, but she barely counted.

With Regina's gaze was stuck on that dog (was it a golden retriever? a labrador?) Emma's trajectory angled a bit and she began walking away from the water and up towards the dunes. Regina followed after being coaxed by a soft nudge and a smile.

At the top of the dunes Regina spotted a bathroom made of stacked cinderblocks.

"You got your bathing suit?" Emma asked with a motion toward the bag Regina carried on her shoulder. They had stopped at another stand down the beach and Emma insisted Regina pick out a bathing suit.

Regina didn't know why Emma didn't tell her to just bring her own bathing suit from the beginning. She already had packed way too many bathing suit options. But she could tell the way Emma grinned as they shopped through the multicolor pieces of fabric that the blonde enjoyed flexing her island power in front of Regina. A power that Regina had yet to figure out.

At first she'd thought Emma had the island wrapped around her finger because of her charming personality, but it was so much more than that. She was like royalty here. Well, she was treated like royalty at least, and there was absolutely no explanation in sight.

Eventually, she'd ask the blonde about it, but for right now, she was content to just enjoy the day.

"Yes. I have it,'" she answered with a pat of her bag.

"Okay. You go change in there and I'm going to get something set up."

Regina raised her eyebrows, "set up here?" She looked out to the beach, which was barren. To the dunes, with were littered with waving grasses. And then to the ocean, which swelled and dipped uneventfully.

What could this woman possibly be planning?

The look of mischief on Emma's face was too adorable though, and she didn't want to ruin it by asking more questions, so she just nodded and turned. Right before she did though, her eyes flicked up to Emma's and some taps of lightning fizzled inside her chest.

It was almost painful how intense she felt when she looked into those green eyes.

Eventually she turned completely, much to Emma's disappointment and head up to the building like she said she would.

Once Regina disappeared into the building, Emma pulled out her phone and dialed with rapid precision. The number on the screen flashed as it rang and rang and rang.

On the third ring, the recipient picked up and Emma began talking nervously without a hello.

"Is it all set up?" she asked. There was some mumbling on the other side of the phone. Whatever the voice had said, it seemed to be exactly what Emma wanted to hear because she responded with a nod that went unheard and a smile.

"Alright, bring it in now." Emma said with a tiny bounce. As if on cue, Regina exited from the bathroom in her same outfit, though extra bathing suit straps peeked out from underneath.

When Regina was just a few steps behind her, Emma grabbed the brunette's hand and dragged her over to a palm tree closer to the water.

"We're going to leave our clothes here," and with that she began stripping her clothes off as if it were no big deal. Shoes were flipped at the trunk of the tree, her shirt came up and over her head, shorts slid off in one firm tug and kicked onto the growing pile of clothes.

When she looked up at Regina, she wore only a bikini.

A green bikini.

A strappy, triangular, thin bikini.

Meanwhile, Regina was dead. Somewhere in between the shirt coming off and the shorts coming down she had died.

But Emma was too excited and childishly carefree in the moment to even think about what her body was doing to Regina. She had her eyes on one thing: and that was the activity she'd been waiting for all day. So when she saw Regina standing there, with her clothes still on, staring at her, she leaned into help.

With a tug of the hem of Regina's shirt she began to lift it up. It wasn't until Regina had automatically raised her arms over her head, the shirt slipping off easily, that Emma froze. It seemed it was only now that she realized what she was doing.

Regina, for her part, had been consciously complying with Emma's intent to strip her of her clothes, her heart thumping and the space between her thighs aching.

"Shit. I'm sorry," Emma said finally with Regina's shirt still in her hand. She couldn't decide where to focus her eyes.

On one hand there was Regina, but she had already been too forward and she didn't want to make it worse. There was the ground, too, but she had to admit, Regina was a much more rewarding view.

Without a response, Regina pushed down her skirt and threw it onto the pile, placing her shoes next to it all. She reached over and grabbed her shirt, which was still hanging from Emma's hand, and dropped it on the ground for her.

Then, she took a step towards Emma and leaned up until she reached her cheek. She pressed her lips against the skin she knew would be soft and lingered just a little too long so Emma knew her intentions.

When she pulled away, she smiled.

There are many smiles in the Regina Mills repertoire. There's the genuine smile, which had been dusty and rarely used before she'd came to the island. There's the fake smile, which had been her go-to for her years with Robin. The cruel smile, a smile that she wished she didn't do so well. The bored smile, the pity smile, the lazy smile. There's the smile that she has to force and the smile that comes easily. The smile that's too toothy she feels the need to duck her head so her hair will cover it. And then, there's the gentle smile.

Now, Regina, by definition, is not a very gentle person. She was many things, but she even she could admit, gentle was not usually one of them. So when a smile appeared on her face, a smile that was nothing but gentle and patient and everything along those lines, it not only surprised everyone around her, it surprised her as well.

In this case though, she nor Emma were particularly surprised when the gentle smile formed so naturally on Regina's face. Because somehow, the gentle smile was the only way to convey what Regina was feeling for the blonde and somehow, Emma understood that perfectly.

"You ready to finally see what we're doing?" Emma asked once her head had decided not to be stuck in the clouds and her feet decided that ground was the best place for them at the moment.

"I'm ready."

"Alright," Emma cranked her head to the side down the beach to the water and said, "look."

During their conversation, a boat had moved up to the shore and now float a little way off from the boundary where sand met water. The boat was open air, and small enough where you could see every inch of it with one fast glance. A man stood at the front.

From the way he was waving his hands, and the shirt he was wearing, Regina recognized him as Killian. She waved back and after that he climbed to the front of the boat and dove off into the water, swimming towards the beach.

They walked down to meet him just as he was climbing out of the water in his soaked clothing, a brilliant smile on his face.

"I owe you, Killian," Emma said as she leaned into hug the man. He returned it with a tight clasp around Emma's body and gave Regina, who stood behind Emma, a good-natured wink.

Regina chuckled and rolled her eyes. If this was how the man was with her, she couldn't even imagine what he was like with a potential suitor.

When the two friends broke apart, Emma held out her hand. Palm up, heart open. Regina looked at it and took it immediately. There wasn't a need for a second thought, or a doubt, any of that. She just took it because it felt right, and man, it felt _so_ right.

Fingers intertwined and with a squeeze that said, 'i'm ready,' they walked off toward the water, which sparkled in the sunlight.

A sigh released from both of them as the first wave washed over their toes. It was perfect swimming water, warm, but just cool enough to be refreshing. The water line which started at their toes went up to their knees and then their thighs as they waded into the water.

Eventually Emma just went for it and took the plunge, leaping forward and submerging herself completely. Regina watched her and felt content. Utterly and completely content.

The blonde woman was like a fish in the water, swimming and flipping underwater like she belonged there. It was awhile until she finally came up for air, and when she did she kept her body underneath the surface. Treading in water, she looked at Regina who was still standing, only wet to her waist.

"Come in, it's nice."

"I'm getting there!"

"You want me to help you get there faster?" Emma asked with a side smile and a flick of the water.

"No," Regina said as she a step backwards. Her eyes said otherwise. Her eyes said that she did want Emma to help her. Badly.

Thankfully, the two woman had the whole telepathy thing going on, so Emma leapt up and grabbed the brunette by her hand. She dragged her down under the water with her and they came up together.

Regina reached up and slicked back her hair, as she turned in Emma's arms. Somehow, when they were underwater she'd ended up sitting on the blonde's lap as they bent their legs to keep the water surface at their shoulders.

With wet lips, they kissed one another. But they were so happy and Emma was running her hand along Regina's back, the touch so light underwater that it was tickling the brunette, so their kiss was really made up of mostly smiles.

Their smiles grew and their lips stretched and they couldn't really kiss anymore because of it, so Regina just rest her forehead against Emma's and they allowed themselves to chuckle to each other.

They stayed in the water for awhile, splashing and diving and just floating around. It felt so good with the sun warming their skin, the water cooling it, that they never wanted to get out.

Eventually though, their fingers began to prune, and so they made the swim to the boat, which was still bobbing just a several yards off.

Emma latched onto the ladder and climbed up first, stopping at the top to make sure that Regina could get up no only could she do that, she looked amazing while she did it. Typical.

Colored towels were passed out and they both sit on the seats in the boat and dried off their shining skin.

"Is this your boat?" Regina asked as she leaned back and tilted her head back to the sun in greeting.

"Yeah. You like it?" Emma was busy tying up her hair into a messy bun that sat atop her head.

"I do. It's cute."

The boat was cute. It was small and speedy and detailed by a professional. Emma liked it because she could whip around the island whenever she wanted. Plus, it was way cooler to drive a boat than a car.

The only weird thing about it, Regina thought, was that there was a tall metal pole sticking up from a flattened ledge at the back.

"Have you figured out what we're going to do yet?" Emma asked while she reached into a cabinet and pulled out a cooler. When she popped the top, Regina saw that it was filled with way too many drinks for just the two of them.

Emma lifted two beers out, dripping with melted ice, and offered one to Regina. The brunette took it and waited until Emma followed up with a bottle opener.

Pop. Pop. Clink.

The necks of the bottles came together in a toast, and then they were tipped back and sipped.

"It's not this boat?" Regina asked with her eyes roaming around for clues.

"Well, this is part of it."

"What's the other part?" Regina asked after another sip of beer. The towel had fallen to the side now and she extended her legs along the seat, her ankles crossed and gleaming in the sun. It was the most beautiful sight Emma had ever seen.

"I suppose you've earned the truth."

Emma pushed up from the seat and pulled out a box from another cabinet. When she opened it, nylon material draped out of it and from the bottom of the box. With her other hand, Emma pulled out harness and held it up to Regina.

Regina took it, thought it over, and then everything in her face dropped, "parasailing…?"

Emma nodded, "oh, yeah."

"But I don't know how."

"Nothing to know. I just strap you up, start the boat, up you go."

"And this is a sport?"

"It's called an extreme sport?" Emma shrugged, "I don't know."

Regina looked at the harness in her hand and pulled it taut as if to test how much weight it would hold. She looked to Emma skeptically. "You actually know how to do this?"

"I help give tourists rides on weekends sometimes if my friend Belle is too swamped at the shop."

"And you've never dropped someone into the ocean?" Regina asked with her eyes full of genuine concern.

Emma took Regina's hand and clasped them between her own. She looked into brown eyes as if she were promising her life away, "I have only dropped one person in the ocean," she said seriously.

Regina's eyes widened in panic, "what?!"

Emma's stoic face burst out in laughter, "I'm kidding."

Regina didn't believe it.

"I'm kidding!" Emma insisted.

Because Emma was so cute, and because the woman seemed to be so excited about it, Regina relented and stood so she could step into the harness. Emma helped her into it because she was a professional, but also because the brunette in front of her took her breath away and she couldn't bear to stand by and just watch.

When the straps seemed tight, Emma worked to hook up the harness to a long, circling line of rope.

Regina watched the blonde lean over and fiddle with the ropes and strings and who knows what. Emma's hair had begun to dry and the bun that sat atop her head was in the process of falling apart piece by piece. The strands that decorated her face blew in the wind and made Regina smile inside.

It was a weird thing, to smile inside. Regina knew it was a weird thing, which is why she didn't really tell anyone else about it, but she truly believed that somewhere inside her chest, her heart was smiling.

Damn, it sounded even stupider when she thought about it in depth. What it boiled down to was that when she looked at the blonde, or at a cotton candy sky, or a hot cup of steaming coffee at the first light of dawn she felt this lightness in her chest that couldn't be explained by physiology or anatomy or anything scientific.

She just felt it and she knew, it was her heart, and it was smiling.

"Are you ready?"

Regina followed her eyes as Emma stood and readjusted her bathing suit, "maybe."

"I'm not going to let you fall, okay?" Emma said.

"Okay," Regina sighed as walked to stand behind the metal pole, which Emma told her would work as her launch point.

"Here's what's going to happen," Emma began, "unfortunately, Killian is going to come swim and get back on the boat."

Regina pouted before she could stop herself and Emma chuckled.

"I know, but I need someone to drive. After that, I'm going to set up the parachute, give you the ok, and up you go."

"Speaking of," Regina mumbled once she noticed a head that was slowly ascending from the side of the boat.

"There's my two favorite girls." He shook his hair like a dog before slicking it back and plopping in the drivers seat. "Hand me a beer mate?"

Emma opened the cooler and tossed him one, "You're here just for the parasailing, then you're off!"

"Of course, wouldn't want to ruin a perfectly good date, would I?"

Regina found herself wondering if the two were related somehow. The way they acted around one another, the teasing, it all seemed so comfortable. If she weren't so unconcerned about everything else except the blonde, she probably would have been jealous.

Killian started up the boat and got it cruising at a speed that produced wind strong enough to dry both of the women's hair.

Regina stood where Emma told her too and waited while the blonde hurried around the boat grabbing this and that as she needed it.

The way the blonde moved was so natural. Everything she did was with a steady hand and confident intent. It was attractive, Regina could admit, that there was someone to steadfast in their actions as she.

Usually the people whom she shared her (some people called it anal) enthusiastic demeanor were those that would face off head to head with her at work. She tried to imagine Emma in one of the suits that the people she worked with wore and couldn't. A part of her was glad that she couldn't, the suit wouldn't have been able to do her justice.

When Regina felt a tug on her hip, she watched Emma step back and gaze at her handy work. Regina was strapped in and ready to go.

"How high am I going?" Regina asked, her nerves really digging into her bones as the weight of the situation settled upon her shoulders.

"500 feet."

"And it's safe?"

"Are you scared?" Emma asked. The thing with Emma, Regina stopped herself and scoffed_, the thing_? She barely knew the woman. With a shake, the thought wriggled itself into the back of her head.

"Not at all," the brunette answered with a long and slow blink that told Emma she had no fear whatsoever.

"I'm going to let you go on three," Emma replied after she readied the ropes, signaled Killian and looked back to Regina who was gripping the handles next to her side. Regina nodded.

"1…" Emma began, Regina gulped.

"2…."

Regina waited nervously for Emma to say that dreaded three, but right before she did the blonde leaned in closer.

"I think you're lying," Emma said. "I think you're terrified."

It was the type of accusation that would have normally angered Regina to no end because it was often delivered with a kind of cockiness she hated, but Emma said it as if she had just realized a secret. As if she had just now pried the truth out of Regina's chest. As if she was talking about more than just parasailing.

"….3"


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: Hope you like it :)**

* * *

Regina hated screaming. She _really_ hated it.

She hated when it came from adults. She hated when it come from children. She hated when it came from babies.

And yet here she was, floating up in the air, suspended by only a thin layer of nylon…. screaming.

On the other hand, Emma couldn't stop laughing. From the way it looked, Regina seemed to be so upset by the horrible screeching noise coming out of her mouth that she had her hand clasped over her lips tightly as possible to muffle it.

She continued to make noise until she had reached the maximum height in the air, and it was only once she leveled out, stopped swinging and flailing a bit, that the screaming ceased.

Emma could see the very moment the brunette relaxed into her harness. The legs previously held straight, loosened and swung as the breeze demanded. Her posture slouched a bit, and her head threw back as if she was laughing.

Five hundred feet in the air, Regina was alone. It was a strange feeling, a wonderful feeling, one that filled her with complete peace as she looked down at the ocean surface. The differing depths colored the blues in shades and she looked for the spots of turquoise where sand bars were inevitably located. Her vision was wide enough to see for miles and her eyes scanned into the distance where a wave broke and foamed prematurely.

The boat was just a speck on the water, and she imagined this is what it must be like for an astronaut to look down to the earth. It was amazing how much could be contained in such a tiny speck. To the astronauts, it was the entire world. Strangely enough to Regina, the boat felt the same way.

Emma leaned back on the side of the boat, still staring up at Regina's floating form. Because they were doing this for fun, and not on business, she could allow the brunette to hang in the air as long as she wanted. It was relaxing not having to worry about yanking someone from the dream world they created up there.

At one point, Regina tilted her head so that she looked down to Emma and she waved. Emma's eyes took a second to adjust to the sun, so she didn't see Regina waving at first, but once the black dots that plagued her vision faded, she did she returned the gesture enthusiastically.

When Emma eventually reached over to the cooler for another drink, she saw Killian watching her, a knowing look plastered on his face.

"You like her," he said without offering any further explanation.

Emma paused. It was so much more real saying it out loud to Killian. She never lied to him, never twisted the truth, never pretended to be anyone but herself with him and so she nodded. "I do."

"How much?"

"How much what?" Emma asked with a quirk of her eyebrow.

"How much do you like her?" He repeated as he finished his beer and reached for another. His hand returned from the cooler, wet and red from the shock of the ice.

Emma knew what he was getting at. She and Killian had been telling each other the harshest of truths for so long that formality was no longer necessary. So when Killian asked Emma how much she liked Regina, he was really asking how much of herself Emma willing to show of Regina, and even further, if Emma was willing to break her rules for the exquisite brunette woman.

The rules that Killian had silently referred to were ones that Emma had made for herself years ago, should she get involved with another vacationer on the island. They were rules that Emma obeyed under every circumstance and never thought twice about breaking. Until now.

Rule #1: Never introduce the woman to your friends. They don't want to meet a woman that's only going to be here a week, so don't make them. Unless you think they will truly enjoy each other's company, then go for it. Lily is not to be mentioned.

Rule #2: Never bring a woman to any of the big three locations: Beehive Beach, Moonlight Garden, Porter.

Rule #3: No family whatsoever. No meeting. No talking. None.

Rule #4: Emotions are to be kept at a minimum. If they're unavoidable, they should be kept on a time limit.

Rule #5: When vacation time is over: no phone calls, no messaging, no "meet-ups"

Rule #1 had already been sort of broken since Killian was there with them now. Rule #2 had already been cast aside since they had just walked through Beehive Beach a few hours ago and Rule #4 seemed hopeless already and it was only the beginning.

Good. They were doing good.

Emma looked at Killian who was leaning against the steering wheel of the boat patiently. The corner of his lips twitched and he twisted the neck of his beer bottle in between his fingertips. "You can't help what you feel, mate."

A pained groan came out of Emma. Having Killian take pity on her was even worse than feeling bad for her crushing self. She knew he was right. She couldn't help it, but she liked to think she could at least goddamn try.

"I think she's ready," Killian said with his hand shaded over his eyes. Emma glanced up again and saw Regina motioning to get down. In response, she shot up and began to work the ropes necessary to lower her back to the boat.

Foot by foot, Regina was pulled back down to earth until the pads of her toes finally touched the rough surface of the boat. Emma's hands were there to catch her when her legs wobbled a bit.

"How'd you like it up there?" Emma asked as she moved to drop her hands back to her side. It seemed her brain was constantly warring with itself on whether to reach for the thing it wanted to touch most, or keep to itself.

"It was…" Regina pressed her lips together and rolled her eyes up in thought. She searched for a word to fully express how she felt, "magical."

Emma's lips stretched too wide too fast and she bit down to keep her smile from spreading out of control. Without thinking, Regina reached up a hand and cupped Emma's face, her thumb swiping along the blonde's cheek.

It was an action so intimate it caught them both by surprise and Regina halted her thumb immediately. They stared at each other a moment in question, both silently asking each other how far they were willing to go with this.

Before they were able to come to a decision, the boat engine was gunned and the floor rocked beneath them. In a movement that was clumsy and uncoordinated they tangled together and fell into the seats of the boat. At first they worked to pry their limbs apart, but with the separation came the cool air, so they stopped, content remained knotted together for the remainder of the ride.

After Killian dropped them off as close to the beach as he could, they waded back to the shore with long, water resistant strides.

"So what now?" Regina asked once the water has transformed into hot, dry sand.

"You hungry?" Emma squeezed the water out of her hair and tossed it around her head.

Regina smiled, "I am."

"I know the perfect place."

They retrieved their clothes, which remained in a pile untouched and walked to the jeep. For once, Regina was grateful for the wind that swept over her head and dried her hair. She looked over while Emma drove and smiled when she saw Emma's lips moving to the words of the song.

Emma glanced over after she felt Regina's brunette gaze on her and laughed, embarrassed. She continued to sing the words, but this time belting the lyrics out loud while throwing back her head.

The song Emma sang was one she'd only heard a few times on the radio, so she didn't know many of the words. She sang the ones she knew, made up the ones she didn't and it was all okay because Regina was looking at her like she was the most charming thing on the entire planet.

"You're a great singer," Regina shouted sarcastically over the music, which was now blasting through the jeep.

"What?" Emma yelled.

"I said you're a great singer!" Regina tried again, even louder this time.

"What?" Emma yelled again.

"I said you're-" but just as Regina attempted to convey what she was saying for a third time, Emma had spun the volume dial until it say on zero. As a result, Regina ended up screaming into silence. She stopped as soon as she could and hit the blonde woman in the arm for tricking her.

Of course one slap was never enough, so they continued to trade little taps and nudges until they realized just how similar they looked to a couple of teenagers on a first date.

Miles down the same dirt road, Emma pulled over at a tiny restaurant with a single sign that only read 'Cafe' hanging above the doorway. When Regina walked in she was overwhelmed by the charm of the place.

Wooden picnic tables were scattered on the floor, unlit candles placed atop them. The ceiling looked like it had been constructed of layered palm tree leaves and the beams that made up the foundation were carved into with knives: proclamations of love, inspirational sayings, and childlike drawings littering the surface.

The restaurant was mostly empty, except for a little boy that sat in the corner with a tiny pocket knife in his hand, carving away at the surface of the table. He looked up when the door opened, the bell attached to it ringing to signal the entrance of a person.

"Emma!" The boy folded his legs underneath his body and stood up on the bench that he had been previously sitting on at the sight of blonde hair. He waved his arms back and forth as if there were hundreds of people standing between he and the two women.

Immediately, Emma's smile grew and she held out her arms. The boy didn't pause for a second, climbed over the table, and ran over to Emma. He hugged her tightly, his arms reaching around her waist and squeezing.

"Henry!" Emma laughed as the boy pulled away. "Where have you been?"

Henry bounced on his feet and thrust he hands in his pockets. A bright spread on his face, gleaming against the relatively dirty nature of his skin. It wasn't that he was filthy, per say, he just looked like a boy who had a tendency to get into shenanigans. Extra dirt included.

"I've been hanging out here for awhile. I went to Beehive for a couple days, too." Emma nodded, a look on her face that Regina couldn't quite read.

"And you've been okay?" she asked him, her forehead wrinkling in concern.

The tone of Emma's voice caught Regina by surprised. It was so motherly, so full of genuine worry that Regina found herself reflecting on how little she knew of this woman.

"Yeah. I've been great!" Henry seemed determined to keep things light, evident by his smiles and still bouncing body.

Emma didn't seem so convinced. She motioned to Regina, "this is Regina."

Henry held out his hand as if he were a salesman, "I'm Henry, Keeper of the Island."

Regina took his hand and chuckled, "Well, Keeper of the Island, it's an honor to meet you." He seemed to like that.

"Henry! Dishes, c'mon let's finish these babies up!" A voice without a face called from the back room. Henry craned his head into the kitchen, which was only visible through a cut out in the wall.

He sprinted into the back, flinging himself haphazardly over the counter with a leap. As he scurried away, Emma and Regina moved to one of the tables and sat across from each other.

"They normally just bring out what they're cooking for the day. That okay with you?"

Regina nodded and looked over to the cut out where she saw the young boy putting on a tiny apron. "Who is he?"

"Henry?"

"Yeah," Regina faced Emma once again and watched as the blonde searched for the words she wanted to use to describe Henry.

"He's…" she trailed off and clasped her hands together, "Well, he's a boy on the island."

"And…"

"And he's homeless," Emma sighed out before correcting herself, "well, kind of."

"He's homeless?" Regina asked in shock. Emma placed a hand on the brunette's and motioned for her to be quieter. She glanced toward Henry to make sure he hadn't heard, and he hadn't. Thank god.

"Yeah. His parents are somewhere on the island I think. A couple years ago they decided they didn't want him, so they put him in the orphanage. But he's not exactly the type to stay put, so he just kinda wanders around and sleeps on beaches."

"But he's just a boy!" Regina spoke too loud again and Emma couldn't help but smile at the record-breaking degree of concern that the brunette's eyes held already.

"People on the island help him out. I know he hangs around here because they feed him and give him a place to sleep sometimes in exchange for dish duty. He comes and stays at the hotel with me during some days if I can convince him."

"Why doesn't he just do that all the time? I mean, if you're okay with it."

"Doesn't want to be a charity case," Emma said as she looked off past Regina. "He hates being a burden on people, to a fault even. Kids got more pride than anyone I've ever seen."

Regina scrunched up her chin. She could relate to that. There have been many times in her life that pride ruled her decision making process, even when she knew it shouldn't. But still, a homeless child wandering around the island, that was just ridiculous.

"He seems to really look up to you."

Emma looked up from the names carved into the picnic table and grinned, "Yeah?" and as soon as she'd said it, Regina realized she'd just seen a part of Emma that she suspected not everyone got to see. Something that Regina guessed was a secret to her smiles.

"Yeah. He really does."

Emma went back to running her fingers over the carvings, "He's like a son to me. If he'd just let me, I think I could be kinda like his..." and then the blonde trailed off so that Regina couldn't discern what was said next.

But she could guess that Emma would have said mother. That if Henry would let her, she could be kinda like his mother. It was a completely new angle of the woman she had met, and she had to be honest, she liked it.

Fun loving, carefree Emma was great, but there was something grounding about the blonde having someone she truly cared about in her life. Something that made Emma seem less like a fantasy that could disappear into thin air, and more like a person that could exist outside the island.

"Orders up!"Henry skirted into the dining room with a giant platter of different plates covering the top of it. He placed it down on the table with a tiny clang. He attempted to wink at the two women, except the entire right side of his faced scrunched up when he did, so it looked much more spastic than charming.

"Why don't you sit with us, Keeper of the Island?" Regina offered much to Emma's surprise.

Henry looked to read the face of the brunette, no doubt searching for traces of pity as he usually did, but strangely enough he found none.

"Okay," he said as he slid in next to Regina.

Just like a perfect gentlemen, he passed out the plates, forks, napkins, and knives. Emma spread out the food and began listing off the names of the dishes to Regina. Within minutes, the chatter and the noise that had once been so abundant at their table was reduced to the scraping of food and the crunching of chips.

"Grannyyyyy" Henry shouted with his mouth still full of food mash. An older woman peeked out from the window that was labeled 'Order Up' and raised her eyebrows in questions.

"This is the best one yet," he shouted as he held up his fork. Something indeterminable, something that looked like a mash of all the food they were eating was on the end of it. The old woman appreciated the gesture in her own way and her stern lips quirked the tiniest bit in response.

Emma leaned in toward Henry, "you almost got her to smile!"

With air that traveled through his nose since his mouth was still so full, Henry chuckled. "I know. I've been trying constantly for two days now. Rumple said he saw her laugh once, but I don't believe him," Henry whispered back.

Emma shook her head, "Rumple's a liar."

"Totally," the boy responded before shoving some more food into him mouth.

Regina watched Emma and Henry's interactions in silence. It was almost comical to her how much they seemed to feed off one another. A comment from one almost always meant a retort from the other.

And even more than that, she watched Henry while she ate her food. He couldn't keep his eyes off the blonde. It seemed he was always checking to see what she was doing. If she took some more of one plate, so did he. If she made a joke, he was the first to laugh. It was blatantly obvious to all, except probably Emma, how much the boy loved her.

"So how long are you on vacation?" Henry asked Regina once his plate had been cleared not once, not twice, but three times.

"How'd you know I was on vacation?" she asked with a crooked smile.

He shrugged, "I've got a gift."

"No, tell me. How can you all tell I'm on vacation?" She put her fork down to show she meant business and lifted her napkin to wipe her face, which of course, had nothing on it.

Henry looked to Emma and they communicated silently for a bit, conveying entire chunks of conversations through their eyes. Eventually, Emma tilted her head and shrugged, "she wants to know."

Regina glanced to Emma, "you can automatically tell too?"

"Oh, definitely," Emma chuckled.

"Alright then, now I have to hear it."

Henry cleared his throat dramatically as if he were about to start a very long rant. "The easiest the way to tell is by the clothes," he began, "but you're clothes look normal."

Regina chuckled and looked over to Emma, who was celebrating as Regina figured she would be.

"I dressed her," Emma said, clearly proud of herself.

"_Half_ dressed me," Regina corrected, "I picked out the shirt."

"But it's mostly the way you move and talk," the boy continued. "Vacationers are always so eager to see the next thing. Always hurrying to this and that. I suppose its because they only have a small period of time here, but they move so fast from thing to thing, they never really _see_ anything."

Regina stared at him, dumbfounded. "And you're how old?"

"Dunno," Henry responded with a shrug.

That caught Regina off guard and she opened her mouth to say something, but nothing to come out. Thankfully, Emma came to the rescue.

"We like to pretend his birthday is August 5th. So in a month or two he'll be twelve."

"But that's in Emma time," Henry said, quite proudly.

"Emma time is the only time the matters," the blonde added while she readjusted her legs under the table and shifted to stay comfortable on the wooden surface.

"But also," Henry added, "Emma usually hangs around with vacationers so I just kind of figured."

Regina immediately looked across form her, to read Emma's face. She could tell the blonde was uncomfortable from the way she refused to look at her and she knew it was because what Henry was saying was probably true.

Not that she could blame the woman, they had both laid out their terms for the vacation and it wasn't as if she had the right to ask or expect anymore from the woman than what they had agreed on: a good time. Even still, she felt a pang of jealousy as she imagined Emma showing another woman her version of the island.

Who was she kidding, she felt a pang of jealousy just imaging Emma with another woman. It didn't matter if the woman meant anything to her or not.

"But she never introduces me to them usually, and she definitely doesn't bring them here, so you must be special," Henry added.

Emma's gaze, which had been extremely focused on the wood of the table, flickered up to Regina. A light pink colored her cheeks and panic swirled in her eyes. Regina took in it all and sighed internally. What was she going to do with this woman?

"Why doesn't she bring them here?" Regina asked as she looked around the place for clues.

Henry rested his face in his palms and glanced nervously at Emma before he answered Regina, "this is her place."

"You own this place?" Regina asked Emma with a tilt of her head. Emma opened her mouth to answer, but Henry jumped in.

"No, this is her _place. _You know the secret place you go when you don't want to talk to anyone. Only me and her know about it." Henry said it with his shoulders squared and Regina recognized it as a territorial motion. He was protecting her.

"Well I won't tell anyone," Regina responded with her hand over her heart, a very serious look in her eyes.

Henry stared at her for a bit. Maybe he was waiting for her to flinch, maybe he was just testing out the waters. Whatever it was, Regina remained steadfast.

"Good," he said eventually. And even though it was only one word, Regina knew there was a lot meant behind that one, 'good'.

When Emma and Regina's eyes finally met, Henry had moved onto clearing the table. There was so much spoken in the one glance between them. There was a 'thank you', a 'tell you more later', a 'I appreciate you' all wrapped into one.

And so with a minute movement that was so small it would have been ignored by an onlooker, Regina moved her hand just a bit and reached her fingers out just a bit more until they grazed against Emma's.

Emma glanced down to their barely touching hands and took a breath. It was time, she realized, for her to open up. She needed to meet this woman, get to know her, while baring her own heart on her sleeve.

"Henry is the single best and single worst thing that's ever happened to me. He's the reason I never sleep in one place. I'm always trying to keep up with him, find him, feed him. He's the reason I'll never leave this island."

Regina listened as if the statement was an answer to a question she had asked. And indirectly, it was. She had wanted to know the reasons for the inside jokes that played upon Emma's face. She had wondered what made the blonde who was she today and for some reason, Emma was going to tell her.

But like a drug, one secret made Regina itch for more. And with one inch given, Regina longed for a foot. Now that she knew a tiny bit of Emma, she wanted it all.

Though no matter how much she wanted it, she would wait, because with Emma patience was worth it. She would hold on until Emma was ready to crack herself open and spill out her true self to her. And when she did, and maybe even before she did, Regina would do the same to herself.

Sliding her fingers until both hands intertwined, Regina turned Emma's palm over and ran her thumb along the skin in the middle. "Thank you," she said once, though she meant it for a million things already.


	11. Chapter 11

"Come on!" Emma called behind her as she continued to sprint down the beach. She squinted in the darkness and waited until the two figures running behind her caught up.

Henry and Regina were out of breath when they reached her, but Emma couldn't stop for more than a couple seconds. They were so close. Just a little ways more.

"Almost there," she encouraged, her hand pointing off in the distance where a giant bonfire stood tall. There were tons of people surrounding it standing on tables, spread out on blankets, some even reclining on personal folding chairs.

The fact that they could at least see the destination gave them all a boost and in what felt like no time, they were walking up to the bonfire in triumph.

"Welcome to the Night of Fire," Emma said with her arms stretched wide to encompass it all: the food, the people, everything.

"What is it?" Regina asked as she stepped up so close to blonde that she could feel waves of heat leftover from their run radiating off her.

"Just an event the hotel puts on," Emma said with a shrug, her eyes scanning along the beach. "Come on, over here."

The trio: Emma, Regina, and Henry (who had needed intense persuasion to join) found towels provided by the hotel and spread them out as if they were on a picnic.

Music was playing from a band set up on the beach, and a few couples danced and swung each other around on the sand. The fire gleamed brightly into the night. Full from the food they had just consumed they all reclined and listened fire crack in time with the guitars.

Somehow, Henry had squeezed in between Regina and Emma and after a few heavy nods, his head slipped into Regina's lap, deep in sleep. Unconsciously, Regina's fingers had begun combing through his hair. Emma added a blanket to the boy's legs.

With a nod toward Henry's sleeping body Emma said, "told you he could sleep anywhere."

Regina glanced down and pushed the boy's hair back in order to get a closer look at his closed eyes. His face was a bit dirty still. She looked up at Emma, her eyes heavy with a guilt that wasn't hers.

"I know," Emma said before Regina could. She knew that look in Regina's eyes. The brunette woman wanted to shield Henry from the horrors of the world just as she did.

The music changed then, shifting from lively strumming to a slow melody, punctuated by long, sliding trombones and quick tapping trumpets.

Emma knew the tune, and when she began to sing to it, Regina looked over and decided to do something she wouldn't be caught dead doing at home. Carefully, she shifted so Henry lay only on the blanket and she stood up.

Standing in front of Emma, she held out her hand. Emma looked at said hand and even further at the face of the beautiful woman standing in front of her.

"Are you asking me to dance, Regina Mills?"

"Are you going to make me beg, Emma Swan?"

Smirks were exchanged and then long, tanned legs were pushed up. Suddenly their bodies were intertwined and spinning.

Emma slid her hand up Regina's spine as they moved slowly music, her fingertips grazing bare skin. Regina reached her arms around Emma's neck, one hand playing with the strands that reached down her back.

Their shoes had been abandoned at the towel and so their toes dug into the sand with each step.

At times they looked at one another, mapping out the other's features and committing them to memory. At other times, they looked beyond the other so that they could focus on the feeling that vibrated throughout their body with each touch.

At one point, Emma leaned her lips toward Regina's ear and whispered, "If you go home after this vacation and I never see you again, at least I'll have this."

To which Regina responded with a 'shh-ing' sound that quickly morphed into a slow kiss. When they broke apart, they smiled because they were happy and because in that moment, nothing else in the world existed.

"Hello, Regina."

Just like that, the magic, the suspension, the elation was over. Because yet again, standing in front of them, ruining another perfect moment, was Robin.

"Robin." Regina wondered if they would ever stop greeting each other like this. Robin nodded and looked to Emma, paying particular attention to her hands on Regina.

"I see you're enjoying the Night of Fire," his tone cut especially sharp on the word 'enjoying'.

"We are enjoying it, thank you." Emma said. She had been content the first night to let Regina handle the man, but at this point she was starting to get annoyed.

"I wasn't exactly talking to you," Robin responded, and it was then that Regina noticed he seemed to be having a little trouble remaining upright.

"Are you drunk?"

Robin lifted a hand toward Regina, which had been partially hidden behind his back until now, "are you a whore?"

"Are we going to have a problem?" Emma asked with a step forward. Regina's hand was still interlaced with her own though, and she could feel the woman pulling her back. She relented because she didn't want to ruin the event and also because the man was clearly drunk, but come on. He was asking for it.

"Why don't you go find Mia?" Regina responded, another hand reaching up and rubbing Emma's arm to calm her down.

At this point, she was so numb to Robin's insults they did nothing to her, but the blonde woman besides her was still affected by his nasty remarks. She began to get a little afraid that Emma would just leap up and tackle the man. It was simultaneously both a flattering and concerning thought.

"Mia is…somewhere else. I don't know. But I'm guessing you already knew that," he spat.

Regina's mouth fell open, "how the hell would I know that?"

"Because you're the whore that caused her to get mad at me. You and," Robin motioned to Emma with his finger, "that one."

The bitterest of laughs came out of Regina. It was so cruel and hollow that it sent a shiver down Emma's spine. "Oh, that's rich. I'm the whore. Okay," she said with her head shaking back and forth, "okay."

"That's right."

"I don't really care what you think of me, Robin. How's that? I don't care," and Regina actually meant it this time. More than any other time in the past, she really meant it.

"I don't think that's true."

Emma clenched her free hand open and closed. The nerve of this man was really starting to wear on her and she didn't know how much more she'd be able to take before her animal instincts won over.

"Robin," Regina warned.

"Can I just talk to alone you for a second," he sputtered with a glare toward Emma, "just for a second."

Regina sighed heavily, but reluctantly untangled her hand from Emma's. Emma felt a shot of jealousy that even after all this man had put her through, he still got time alone with Regina.

Robin and Regina walked a couple steps away into the darkness and Emma watched as they talked, observing carefully for any action that seemed too aggressive on Robin's end.

In the end, it only took a total of thirty seconds of talking before Robin grabbed Regina's wrist and refused to let it go. From there on, it only took Emma a few more seconds to get herself over to where the two adults were now arguing and punch him square in the face.

Unfortunately, Robin's drunkness worked in his favor and the pain of Emma's hit hadn't yet set in before he returned her punch with his own, landing right on the corner of Emma's mouth.

Emma finished him off a second later, all it took was a mere push over and he was a goner, but blood seeped from her lip and down her chin.

Thankfully, because they had been standing just off from the fire, no one else had noticed the brawl. Holding her lip, Emma walked over to an event organizer she knew and pointed to Robin, who was crumpled in the sand.

The organizer nodded and went over to attend to Robin, but Regina could tell they were a bit bitter that their golden child had been roughed up him because they practically dragged him over in the sand rather than picking him up.

Once that was sort out, Emma grabbed Regina, picked up Henry, and wedged a few towels under her shoulder all while walking away from the bonfire.

The last thing they heard before they were completely out of earshot was Robin screaming and swinging his fist from the bon fire, "I'll see you tomorrow!" he threatened Emma.

"Emma, what are you doing? We need to get you cleaned up," Regina kept reaching over and trying to blot Emma's lip. When that didn't work she tried yanking her hand to make Emma stop walking but the blonde woman was not having it.

"We can't miss it," Emma would only respond as she continued to trudge on down the beach.

After ten minutes, the flat sand to the left of them reached high up and hardened into rock. The amount of flat beach decreased until only a few yards of moist stand separated the water from growing rocky cliffs. The cliffs traveled next to them until they were so tall Regina could barely see the tops.

It wasn't until the beach turned sharply that Regina saw the insides of the cliffs scooped out, caves created in their wake.

"Emma," Regina said again, with a tug.

Emma turned, Henry still sleeping soundly in her arms, "we can't miss it."

"Miss what?"

"This entire day I've been waiting to show you the stars on the other side of the island."

At that, Regina's grip on Emma's arm relaxed. She did want to see the stars. So badly, she'd wanting to see them. "Okay."

Emma nodded and carried Henry into a particular cave with a relatively wide entrance and a high ceiling. As they continued to walk into it, Regina found herself clinging tighter to Emma. There were holes in the roof of the cave, which provided some moonlight, but not enough to completely illuminate the path.

Eventually, Emma found a spot she deemed appropriate and she set Henry down on the sand. By now, his eyes were open and blinking, but Regina doubted that he was fully awake and comprehending what was occurring.

Once the first towel was spread out, Emma encouraged the boy to crawl onto it, which he did, right before promptly falling back asleep.

The rest of the towels were laid out for the two woman and once they settled on top of them, Regina waited for something to happen. Unfortunately, nothing did.

"Should I be seeing something?" She asked with her head turning over to Emma.

Emma squinted to look up at the holes in the cave ceiling, "it's almost time. We just need the moon to move a little bit more."

"And then what?" Regina asked. She had no idea how they were supposed to see stars if they were inside a cave where they could barely see….Regina's heart began thumping in her chest to a pace she knew it couldn't maintain.

The ceiling of the cave, which had been nothing more than blackness just a second ago, was now littered with millions of glowing spots. And not just glowing spots, but glowing blue spots.

The walls and the ceiling was covered with this fluorescent blue that glowed so bright, Regina could see a perfect outline of Emma's face.

"What is this?" Regina asked, as her head remained craned back and her lips parted in awe.

"Glow worms."

"Worms?" Regina's face twisted into disgust and Emma reached down and clutched her hand.

"They're harmless. And they're beautiful, come on, how could you hate them?"

Regina glanced back up at the millions of the blue light bulbs that had been seemingly strung along the ceiling just for her. Emma was right. She couldn't hate them.

"And this," Emma said, "is how there are stars on only one side of the island."

Regina, pleased with both Emma's surprise and her wittiness, snuggled her head into the crook of Emma's neck. She placed a kiss on the sensitive skin there as a thank you.

"You're amazing," Regina sighed out.

"Nah," Emma responded, "you're just catching me in my comfort zone."

Regina thought about arguing with the blonde, but she came up with a better idea for the time they had underneath the stars.

"I'm a workaholic," Regina admitted after a brief bout of silence. The brunette hoped Emma understood that she had taken Emma's earlier admittance and tucked it away for safe keeping and that she had appreciated that token of truth so much that she was willing to return it with her own.

Emma did understand, and so she nodded and waited to see if Regina wanted to tell her anymore.

"And I'm mean," Regina said as she bit on the inside of her cheek harshly.

"I'm sure you're not-"

"No, I am," Regina lifted her head from Emma's neck and looked at the blonde straight on, "my employees hate me."

The admittance seemed to break something inside Regina and she felt tears clawing at the back of her eyes. She tried to blink them away. She tried to look every which way so they'd descend back from where they came from, but they didn't.

When the first sob echoed in the cave, Emma turned to hug the woman beside her as if she'd been expecting it. Regina wiped uselessly at her face, "I'm sorry. I don't know why…"

"It's okay. It's okay," Emma hushed as she ran her fingers through Regina's hair to calm her.

"I spend a lot of time alone," Regina added through her tears. She didn't know why she kept going on, it was just embarrassing at this point, but she couldn't exactly stop.

"So do I."

"I hate dogs." Regina cried, "everyone loves dogs, but I hate them."

"That's alri-"

"And everyone thinks I cook, but I always get takeout," Regina nearly wailed and Emma couldn't help but laugh. The laughter was contagious and once Regina realized the ridiculousness of the truths she was spilling, she couldn't stop the laughing, tears glistening on her face the entire time.

"I'm sorry," Regina said once again.

"Don't be sorry," Emma responded, the last of the laughter still escaping from her system.

Regina looked up, around, at Emma, at the ground, at it all and she finally came to a conclusion: "this is ridiculous."

Emma smiled sadly and replied, "it doesn't matter how many times we say it. It's not going to get easier."

"I know."

"….Emma?"

"Yes?"

"Are we sleeping here?"

"If you want to."

"Will the worms fall on us in the middle of the night?"

Emma laughed, "no. They will not."

"Okay, then we can sleep here."

"Goodnight Regina."

"Goodnight Emma."

All was quiet for a little, but then Emma heard a tiny voice whisper, "please don't fall on me in the middle of the night, worms."

Emma turned to look at Regina, but she appeared to be asleep. "Was that you?"

"Hm?"

With a smile that was willing to keep Regina's soft side under wraps, Emma said, "nothing," before closing her eyes and allowing every muscle in her body to relax.

* * *

Sometime in the middle of the night, Regina folded into Emma until not a single inch of air floated between them. She buried her face in the shirt that smelled wholly of the blonde and sighed. They remained like this, happy and snuggled together for exactly forty-two minutes.

In fact, it wasn't until midnight on the dot that Regina's lips, which had maintained a relaxed smile since the beginning of her trip, tightened and turned down. Her forehead crumpled into a littering of wrinkles and a fearful whimper escaped from between her lips.

It was impossible to think that somehow, in that moment, Regina had unconsciously become aware of the disaster of events that were about to occur just hours away.

It was impossible to think that the magic of the caves had attempted to stir her awake so that she could flee, so that she could be safe, but that the comfort of Emma had kept her sleeping soundly.

And it was most definitely impossible to think that the whimper that escaped Regina's lips and echoed out against the walls of the caves could fully foreshadow the devastation that loomed just on the horizon.


	12. Chapter 12

Once the buzz of excitement settled down, many stories began circling to explain why the volcano erupted on the east side of Moonflower Island that night.

The romantics weaved a tale about how two beautiful women, separated by the ocean, willed the fire mountain to burst so they could be trapped together forever.

The pessimists said it was going to happen eventually.

The optimists declared it a miracle.

The politicians claimed it was something that happened by chance, a rare chance. They said it was freak accident, something to be very sorry about, very sorry indeed.

The environmentalists blamed it on global warming and corporations.

Regina said it was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

Emma had no comment.

* * *

It started with a rumble, as it always seems to.

The rumble that was simultaneously loud and distant in a way that only thunder could replicate. Unfortunately, it went mute to the sleeping figures curled up in the cave.

The sound after that was very loud, and not at all distant. In fact, it was the sound of rocks falling and crumbling all around Regina and Emma and Henry. Squinting eyes and panicked faces came next and the trio covered their heads as they waited for the dust that filtered through the air to clear.

The glow of the worms on the ceiling didn't falter during the destruction, but merely dimmed and spread throughout the cave as the waves of light reflected off the floating dust particles and ricocheted every which way.

"Henry?"

"Emma? Emma!"

"Regina!"

At first there was only a blur of flailing arms that reached to find one another. Once they did, find one another that is, their hands grasped onto whatever clothing, skin, anything they could reach and refused to let go.

When the air finally cleared, it was the worms that allowed them to see anything. For the holes in the ceiling of the cave, where Emma had been able to see the moon, were covered, as was the entrance in which they had walked in through.

"What happened?" Regina asked Emma, her eyes darting around to look at the destruction of the cave.

Emma shook her head. She had no idea. Never once in her life on the island had there ever been an earthquake or a tsunami, or anything of real destruction. Moonflower Island had always been a place of quiet tranquility. So much so that it was the tag line for many of the tourist brochures shipped out to the mainland.

"Emma?" Henry's voice was quiet and it trembled as if he were on the verge of tears, but when Emma looked over she realized that couldn't be because his face was already coated with the salty liquid.

"I'm going to look around, okay?" Emma took a breath and focused to still her pumping heart. She was just a scared as the other two, but she knew they were looking toward her to get them out of this.

She was the leader, the savior, the reason they were in this god-forsaken place anyway. So she picked herself up and forced her legs to walk strong and not wobble, she willed her hands not remain steady and not shake, and she began to take in her surroundings.

There had been a cave-in, that much was clear. A wall of boulders that had crashed down and created a blockade that Emma doubted a backhoe could get through, never mind three pairs of trembling hands.

Looking up, she searched for cracks that would reveal light, only to realize that it was probably still night. It didn't seem like enough time had passed for it to be day at least, but she really couldn't be sure.

"How long do you think we were sleeping?" Emma asked as she ran her fingers over the walls of the section of cave they were trapped in. Regina looked up from her spot on the ground where she was cradling Henry in her arms and rubbing his back.

Her face was two-toned, made up of a brave face trying its best to overshadow a desperate fear. "A couple hours? I don't know."

Emma bit on her lip and nodded after a pause. It seemed like only a few hours to her, too. She continued to run her hand along the wall in search of an answer, but the light blue glue from the ceiling wasn't enough for her to see anything in detail.

When she had surrounded the perimeter, she returned to the spot on the sand next to Regina and Henry. They looked for her to answers and she felt horribly guilty when she could give them none.

"It's too dark for me to even see which way we should attempt to move. I think we should wait until the sun rises."

"Wait until morning?" Regina asked, her voice rising in concern. "What if we can't see the sun?"

"Then," Emma sighed, "I don't know we'll have to figure it out then. But as of right now, we can't do anything."

"So we're stuck."

"For now."

There was no answer from Regina or Henry. The truth was heard enough to swallow, they didn't have enough energy to combat Emma's decision to do nothing for the time being.

"Henry, buddy?"

Henry looked up to Emma, his eyes drooping tiredly as the effects of the adrenaline wore off. "Yeah?"

"Just go to sleep, okay? We'll wake you up when we know what to do."

It seemed ridiculous to Regina that the boy was even able to fall back into a sleep after what had happened, but when she remembered how much his body must go through on a daily basis just finding a place to sleep, an enclosed cave free of bad weather must be like a dream.

The women remained quiet until they were sure that he was asleep. It wasn't until he nuzzled his head back into Regina's lap, a new favorite place of his, that they began speaking in hushed tones.

"Emma, was that an earthquake? Or, or…what was it?"

Emma pinched sand between her fingers and watched it fall to the ground. She had a hunch of what it might be, but it was cloaked in a heavy denial.

When the blonde didn't answer, Regina became inpatient, the snappy side of her demeanor coming out for the first time on the island.

"Emma."

"I think it was a volcano."

"This is a volcano?" You brought me to an active volcano?" Regina's tone was harsh and even though Emma knew it was the result of her desperation, it still caught her off guard.

"No. I did not bring you to an active volcano. There's one near here, and it wasn't exactly active, but it had been overdue a couple thousand years for an eruption. We never thought it would actually..." Emma trailed off, her thoughts wandering elsewhere.

"If that's what this is," Regina motioned around her, "what's going to happen?"

"To us?" Emma's fingers stilled and she faced the brunette woman beside her.

"To everyone."

Emma swallowed a giant lump that had begin to form in her throat, her stomach bottomed out in the depths of her abdomen and she couldn't decide if it was because she was hungry or because she thought she was going to throw up.

"The east side of the island would probably be covered in ash. The west side of the island would be untouched and all the land in the middle would be a disaster from the shaking ground. Trees uprooted, rocks overturned, caves…fallen in."

Running her hands through her hair, Emma reminded herself to keep an open mind. As of right now this was all hypothetical. She had no idea what had really happened out there. It could have been a tiny earthquake located just beneath them. The rest of the island could be going on their merry way without a clue.

The thought induced both tremendous worry and relief.

"My parents would put together emergency committees, evacuation would begin to occur. Tourists first, then the islanders as fast as we can…"

Emma could have gone on and on in her completely hypothetical thinking. It was strange. It sort of calmed her. Coming up with a plan to combat a disaster she was pretending to know had happened was a better option than sitting in a dark cave with no idea what was going on outside of it.

Regina interrupted her before she could continue, "your parents?"

Eyes became wide when Emma realized her slip. There goes Rule #3: no family whatsoever.

"I, They-"

Regina waited for Emma's stuttering to cease because she needed something to distract her from the panic that had taken hold of her heart and refused to let go.

"They're royalty," Emma began with almost a laugh. She knew it wasn't the time for laughing, but even now, it was funny, when she said it out loud at least.

"Royalty?"

"They're the Queen and King of the Island. We don't have a democracy on Moonflower Island like they do in the United States. We have our own little monarchy, though it's so small the US mostly controls us via tourism, but it still exists, and well, they're it."

The brunette woman's mouth bobbed open and closed for a few seconds as she played back the past two days with the blonde. The free clothes, the special treatment, the politician-like smile.

"So you're…you're the Princess of Moonflower Island?" Regina asked with eyebrows raised as far as she could push them.

Emma smiled and scootched a bit closer to Regina, her hand resting upon her knee, "Yeah. That's me."

Regina threw her head back and laughed. She laughed because it only added to the hilarity of the situation. Her spending time with a princess, but also because she was so incredibly delirious on stress.

She'd always thought avoidance and denial were the strongest of forces and sitting there in a nearly collapsed cave, laughing, she couldn't have believed it any more.

"I guess now you know one of the big three," Emma said in a tone so fearful it made Regina's heart ache.

"The big three?"

"Secrets. I believe everyone has three big secrets they carry with them."

Regina took a deep breath and her chest rose and fall as a result, "what if someone has more than three?"

Emma shook her head, "only enough room for three. If another, bigger one comes up, it replaces one."

Regina weighed it back and forth in her head as she listed through secrets she'd contained throughout her life. She ordered them by importance, and thought about which ones she considered the biggest. Emma was right. She had three.

"Why is one of your big secrets the fact that your parents are royalty?"

Emma didn't answer at first. Instead, she just rubbed her thumb over and over in a mindless pattern along Regina's leg. A distraction, a comfort, she focused on it to keep the sinking feeling from persisting inside of her.

"Am I approaching on another of the three?" Regina asked eventually. She didn't want to push Emma too far, but it seemed strange to want to hide something as factual and well known as that.

"No, you're not." Emma said as she stopped her moving hand and reached up to push some of Regina's dust filled hair away from her face. When her hand had reached around the brunette's ear, she paused and held it there. "They killed to get their spot at the throne."

Regina responded in a flat tone, never one to judge before she heard the full story, "they assassinated?"

Emma shook her head, "no nothing like that. It was more militaristic. They were leaders of a rebel group that wanted change, good change. They're good leaders, fair, but to get to that spot they…they had to kill a lot of people."

"A coup," Regina said mostly for herself. She both hated and understood the grey area of wars. After all, if it was as simple as good versus bad, she figured that in many of her own personal wars, she'd be automatically labeled as bad.

"Yes, a coup. I know they did it for the best of the island, but I've never gotten past it. Haven't talked to them in two years because of it."

A hand reached up to encase Emma's, which still rest on Regina's neck, eyes that told Emma they understood bore into green ones. "I'm sorry."

"Thank you."

Wanting to return the favor, as she always seemed to want to, Regina dropped their clasped hands back down to her lap. "I had a son," she said in a voice that didn't do as good of a job at being monotone as it wished.

"Had?" Emma asked as her eyes flicked down to Henry, who was still floating in a blissful sleep.

"Well, I adopted a little boy, a baby, about nine years ago."

Emma did the math; Regina couldn't be older than early thirties. "Nine years ago? Weren't you really young?"

A tiny squeak escaped into the air, "yes."

"What happened?"

"I wasn't ready," Regina said as she bit her lip to keep from crying. Two times within a twenty-four hour period was unacceptable. This time though, she succeeded in keeping herself composed. "I felt so lonely, so isolated I thought a child would help, but once I had one I wasn't ready. I couldn't do it and commit to my job like I wanted. I'm not cut out for motherhood."

Emma laughed. She actually laughed. And Regina looked at her with a pained look that appeared like she's been stabbed in the heart. Of all the things…

"No," Emma recovered once she saw Regina's face, "I'm not laughing at you, it's just…" the blonde motioned to Henry sleeping on Regina, "this kid here, sleeping on your lap barely trusts the people he's known all his life. You come along and he's latched onto you within the hour. Regina… you're the most natural mother I've ever met."

It was the most perfect response Emma could have said and Regina didn't exactly know how to handle it. Nothing in her life had gone as smoothly as her relationship with Emma.

Sure, life for Regina Mills appeared to be breeze. She always got the apartment she was looking for. The next promotion always had her name on it. Money was never an issue, never.

But with people, she'd always had to scrape and claw her way to maintain a halfway decent relationship. And even then it always went down in burning flames.

And now, humorously, she realized everything had switched. The minute she had found someone she clicked with, someone with whom everything was effortless, the world began crumbling around her. Literally.

"Have you ever told anyone all three secrets?" Regina asked suddenly because the thought had popped into her head and she couldn't get rid of it. She was torn between wanting to feel special and understanding that she definitely wasn't the first Emma Swan had fallen for.

The color drained on Emma's face, "I came close once, but...no."

Regina didn't respond because she could tell Emma didn't want to elaborate and for now, she was okay with that.

The silence that had begun as a brief pause grew until it filled the air. Emma wished it could have been a comfortable silence, like the one she and Regina had shared back in the hotel, but the situation was too stressful for that.

Tension could only last so long without anything happening though, so after what Emma guessed was around an hour, Regina's eyes began to get heavy and each blink slowed until the blink was no longer a blink, but a closing of the eyes.

With their hands still clasped, Emma pulled Regina's nodding head into her chest so the woman didn't have to battle with gravity to stay asleep. When Regina finally sunk into Emma's embrace, they became a knotted ball of twitching limbs and silent breaths.

Emma remained awake, thinking. She looked at the woman that lay against her chest and the boy that lay against the woman's lap and she thought about the thousands of people that could be laying in a similar way up above. The only difference, Emma feared, was that those people up above would not open their eyes to see the streaks of sunlight that were beginning to filter in through cracks in the ceiling as Regina and Henry would.

And so, Emma cried. Feeling so desperately alone with the terror that weighed on her heart, she cried, all the while hoping to God that neither Regina nor Henry would wake up and hear the muffled sobs that she released into the back of her hand.

* * *

**If you kill the author, she can't fix it... :)**


	13. Chapter 13

Emma roused Regina and Henry awake once the beams of sunlight were strong enough for her to target their sources. There were an abundance of tiny cracks, but there was one spot where a quarter sized hole of light shone through. Emma kept her eyes focused on that one spot.

That would be their escape.

While Regina and Henry shook their heads and blinked their way into the darkness, Emma untangled herself from the two and walked over to the wall of newly fallen boulders. She pushed and tugged at some to test the water. They refused to budge.

She released a frustrated growl and like a moth to a light she felt a presence next to her leg. Looking down she saw Henry standing there, staring at the wall with her, the same look of stubbornness burning in his eyes.

His face was dirty from the dust, his clothes disheveled. A chunk of his hair had flipped up and remained at a strange angle because of how he'd been sleeping. If they had been safe on the beach, or inside the hotel room, Emma would have brushed it down with her hand, a chuckle that would only serve to embarrass Henry dancing on her lips.

"Help me out, kid?" Emma asked as she walked over to a medium sized rock that didn't appear to be a crucial part of the wall's infrastructure. Key word: appear.

Henry nodded, walked to one side of the rock and wedged his fingers as far in as he could get. Emma did the same. Regina, who had joined them by the wall, wiped her forehead of beads of sweat, the warm temperature had begun to rise steadily from the lack of airflow.

"On three," Emma began and she readied her arms and legs, "1, 2, 3"

They pulled so hard they forgot to breathe and refused to let go until both of their hands began to bleed from the rough surface of the rock. When they finally gave up, it was only because their grips had slipped from the rock, and their bodies had thudded against the sand.

Henry pushed up and looked at the rock. "Again," he said with his lips flattened into a straight line. Emma nodded and took her place across from him. They stared at each other over the rock in agreement.

Yet again, they pulled until they fell. The rock remained unmoved.

"Again," Emma said this time, her eyebrows furrowing in frustration.

No luck.

"Again," Henry panted as he pushed up from the sand with his bloodied palm. When Regina saw the imprint of red they left behind, she held up her arms. "Stop! It's not working."

She walked over to Henry first and inspected his hands. Not only were they ripped, but the wounds were engrained with tiny rocks and pebbles.

"Henry, we have to clean this up."

Henry inspected his own hands, the pain of the rips rushing through his system in one sudden smack. Emma walked over and inspected them as well. She glanced around her as if there would be a first-aid kit sitting over in a corner.

Without a word, Regina eye's flicked down to her skirt. She tugged on Emma's hand as a thought entered her head. A grimace released from the blonde and Regina turned over her hand as a result. The rips on Emma's hand were just as bad, if not worse than Henry's.

Regina tucked her lip beneath her teeth and forced herself not to panic. She reached down and grabbed the hem of her shirt, pulling forcefully so that a tear traveled a couple inches up.

Pulling horizontally along the bottom, Regina produced strips of cloth that she wrapped around both Emma and Henry's hands. Blood soaked through it, but at least the thin layer would keep more dirt from getting in.

"That rock isn't going to move," Regina concluded and she looked to both Emma and Henry. They remained staring at it though, and the brunette had a feeling her warning was going to go unheard.

"It's not going to move," she repeated. Their shoulders sagged and she felt her lungs open up at the prospect that maybe they would listen to her. Maybe they would give up. Maybe they wouldn't hurt themselves anymore.

But while the idea that they would give up made Regina feel safer for their wellbeing, it set Henry on edge. He was just a kid and to him, this was their only way out. Tears danced on his eyelashes in desperation and Regina sighed when she saw them.

She walked over to the wall and carefully balanced one foot on the side of a particularly large boulder. She moved to the next and then next as she ascended. Each hand that reached her for a rock and each foot that settled upon a rough surface tested for a vulnerability that could be taken advantage of.

Unfortunately, after climbing to the top and along either side of the wall, she found no spots where rocks were sitting. It seemed that every single portion of the wall was crucial in its formation. What bad luck.

When she half-hopped, half-fell down, she wiped the sweat gathering on her palms on her skirt and shrugged. She tried to be nonchalant, like this was no big deal, a simple set back. But inside her heart was thumping away, the sound echoing inside her chest.

Henry sat down at the sand and stared at the wall. Regina and Emma joined him after a minute. In a flat row they all bore their eyes into those depressing grey rocks.

"How much air do you think is in here?" Henry asked then, breaking the thick silencing that had been forming between them all.

Emma and Regina looked at one another and then back at the boy, "we don't have to-"

"Don't lie to me," was the only thing he said in return.

Emma nodded. Henry was right. He deserved the truth. "A couple of days."

"What do you think it would be like to suffocate?"

Regina placed a hand around Henry's back and scooted him closer to her, "don't think about that."

"Why? It might happened!" Henry screeched. "We could never get out of here ever again."

"Henry, don't-" Emma began, but Henry was panicking and he couldn't stop his heart from racing or his mouth from speaking.

"No. It's true. We could die here Emma. I've never even been off the island! At least you had the chance to spend a single day on the mainland with Lily, I've never even been to the airport."

Regina watched as Emma's face drained of every ounce of color. The blonde's throat bobbed as it attempted to swallow. She had no response to Henry's rant and Regina wondered which part had affected her so heavily.

When Henry received no answer, he looked over to Emma and saw her struggling to breathe. The heaviness of what he'd just said settled upon him and he crawled over to her. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he begged as Emma began to cry.

Regina watched the whole situation in confusion. What had Henry said to make her so upset? She remained still, feeling useless to comfort the blonde for something that she wasn't even sure of.

"Emma, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring it up. I didn't mean to bring _her_ up. Please don't leave me here," he began to tremble as his eyes flickered from each of Emma's eyes. "I'll never talk about it again, I'm sorry. Please don't just leave me."

Flashes of Henry's backstory appeared in Regina's mind as she attempted to put together the scene unfolding before her. Emma had said that Henry's parents had just decided they didn't want him anymore. Regina wondered exactly what that entailed.

Did they drop him off at a beach and never come back? Did they tell him he wasn't welcome with them anymore? How did one go about abandoning a child?

She was slapped across the face with bitter disgust as she realized that she knew exactly how one went about abandoning a child. She had done it herself after all. Self-hate could not have been stronger for Regina as Henry begged Emma not to leave her. That child, crying to just be loved, that could have been her son.

What kind of monster could do that, she had wondered when she met Henry. What kind of monster could just leave a perfect boy like him? Now, she mentally berated herself. A monster like her could do that. She _had _done that.

"Henry," Emma said with a gentle hand falling over his head and pressing it to her chest. "I'm not going to leave you."

He shook his head, refusing to believe her words. He had trouble believing anyone's words these days.

Emma spoke into Henry's hair since his face wouldn't turn towards her, "look at me," she said and eventually, he did. "I'm not going to leave you, but you have to stop running from me. Okay?"

Henry stared at her, a million thoughts running through his head. So Emma continued to make it very clear that she meant what she said, "You have to stop running."

Tears spilled over and out of Henry's eyes as the truth of the past few years settled on his chest. The hurt that he had pushed down deeply in order to survive came up and exploding inside of him.

"I'm not going to leave you," Emma repeated over and over as she tightened her arms around the boy. Eventually, Henry sunk into Emma's embrace and his eyes closed. The stress was too much on his body. Besides the fact he was small, he didn't eat enough, sleep enough. It was exhausted and just now deciding to repair itself.

Regina watched from just beside the two, thinking offhandedly how similar they looked to a mother and son duo. She reached a hand on Emma's arm, which was still shaking from the comment Henry had made. A comment that had sparked a million questions inside of her, and yet none of which she would ask right now.

"Are you okay?"

Emma tightened her lips together; her eyes still pinned on that rock wall. That rock wall that was going to trap them in here forever. Her chin quivered in a way that was disheartening and she wrestled with her facial muscles to keep it steady.

"I don't want to know what it feels like to suffocate, Regina," Emma whispered finally.

Regina felt like Emma's words were loud and blaring, though she knew they were spoken in hushed tones. Her eyes followed along the blonde hair that danced down Emma's shoulders. She watched the muscles rippling along Emma's arm as she held the little boy close to her chest.

She imagined waking up to that golden hair spread about her pillows. She imagined those arms rippling as they circled around her. She thought to a time in their future when Emma's chin could have quivered at the prospect of being too happy. She imagined watching tears roll down Emma's face because all of the feelings she held inside her heart had decided it needed to find a way out so that everyone would know how happy she was. Just how incredibly happy she was.

What do you to say someone is an almost lover? What do you say to someone you know you _could_ love? Someone you could imagine waking up to every morning?

You don't tell them you love them, because you don't entirely mean it. Not yet anyway. You don't tell them you could spend the rest of your life with them because you don't know if life will allow that just yet.

You don't know a lot and yet you know one thing for sure. You know that this person, this almost lover, will be in your thoughts forever. Whether that's in the form of a daily reminder or as a long-term memory, you know you will never forget them.

And shouldn't that count for something?

Shouldn't an impact like that be shouted to the rooftops just as loudly as declarations of love are?

Shouldn't there be something that Regina could say to convey how much potential she felt for Emma?

"I don't either," was what Regna said instead, and she knew it wasn't enough.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: So sorry about the wait. Finals and a new job got me overwhelmed to say the least. But don't worry, I'm still very much planning on finishing this story. **

* * *

The spinning blades of the helicopter created chaos at the tops of the trees. Swaying and bending, the leaves tried desperately to get away from the viciously circulating air.

"See anything, your majesty?" the pilot asked into the microphone that hung down from his headset. A petite woman with a pixie cut sat beside him, her head craning toward the window, her eyes scanning down.

"They wouldn't be in here. She never comes in here," the woman insisted. The pilot looked doubtful but nodded nonetheless and steered the helicopter to the right, veering away from the internal portion of the island, and closer to the beach.

They paced up and down the sandy dunes as they surveyed the damage.

The side of the island that the erupted volcano stood on was covered in cooling lava, the air concentrated with floating ash, but this side, the side where Emma lived and breathed on was untouched by the volcano's direct effects. Instead, it seemed that most of the damage had come from the earthquake-like after shocks.

Trees bent, houses caved in, rocks turned over. If it could be broken, it was.

As Queen of the island, this devastation had pained Snow with a sting that seemed unbearable – that is until she found out that Emma, her daughter, had gone off the night before, and still hadn't returned.

Word was she had been hanging around a certain tourist as of late, something that Snow had always disapproved of. "Find someone that lives on the island," she'd always told her daughter. "They'll lead to a more stable life," she'd encouraged.

Yet again, Emma had never been one to strive for a stable life. No, her daughter had decided that gallivanting around the island and never coming home was a better idea.

Well, look how that turned out for her.

Snow scowled at herself. This was not the time to be bitter about her daughter's abandonment of her and her husband, this was a time to make sure she was alive.

She ordered the pilot to fly the length of the beach one last time, just in case she had missed something the first three times. Eventually though, she had to face the facts.

Emma was nowhere to be seen.

The helicopter lowered slowly to land onto Beehive Beach, where tons of people were swarming around as usual, despite the fact that there had been a volcano eruption and resulting earthquake just hours earlier. This hustle and bustle didn't surprise Snow in the slightest.

Ever since Emma was a girl, this had been one of her favorite places. She and her husband heard daily reports of the islanders that lived on that beach. Without homes, constant food or water, they resorted to selling whatever they could find or craft from the land.

After the telling thump of the helicopter landing, Snow tore off her headset, nodded to the pilot and climbed off. Her eyes scanned for a specific man.

When a cane caught her eye, she locked her gaze on the owner and pushed through the hoards of people to get to him. Rumple would know where her daughter was. He seemed to know everything these days.

As she softly nudged her way past a shoulder, then a flying elbow, people began to notice her presence. Immediately they backed away and gave their Queen some space, bowing their heads just a bit in respect. Rumple, though, merely tilted his head up and smiled at the woman walking towards him.

"Your majesty, what a pleasure."

"As always, Rumple," Snow's voice came out tight, diplomatic some would call it. The truth of the matter was, she'd never liked Rumple. He was sneaky, sly, and the fact that he seemed to know more about matters of the island than anyone else put her extremely on edge.

"What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for Emma."

Rumple laughed at that. He actually laughed, and it angered Snow to the point that her fists clenched at her sides. The older man detected the instant anger and held up his hands, "no disrespect, your majesty. I simply laughed because she is no doubt with the tourist I met just a day before."

Snow tightened her jaw muscles. For some reason, she immediately placed the blame of Emma's disappearance on this mysterious person. If she knew one thing about her daughter, it was that if she liked someone enough, she would show them everything there was to know about her pride and joy: the island.

This usually meant adventurous hikes, nights at the waterfalls, days on the ocean, going in places that were dangerous all the while being reckless.

"Do you know where?" Snow asked.

Rumple rolled his eyes to the top of his head in thought. He filtered through the countless layers of gossip, observation, and knowledge he'd gathered from the past few days alone.

All of the sudden his eyes lit up, "The Starry Caves," He pointed his finger to the sky in pride.

Snow took a deep breath in, one that filled her lungs to the brim with oxygen and released it in a steady stream to remain calm.

_Calm_, she chuckled bitterly. As if she could even pretend to be calm right now.

"Word is, she stopped by the hotel bonfire, got in a fight with a tourist. Her tourist's ex-lover that is, and fled toward the Starry Caves."

"A fight?" Snow groaned. She didn't even know who her daughter was these days.

"She was with the boy as well," Rumple said.

"Henry?"

Rumple nodded in confirmation.

"Should I ask how you know all this?"

A wicked smile unfolded from the man's mouth, "are you sure you'd like to know the answer?"

A flicker of doubt spread over Snow's face and it was enough to make her back down. She pursed her lips and shook her head, "no. Have a good day, Rumple."

"Same for yourself, your majesty."

Snow stalked back to the waiting helicopter through a crowd that parted like the sea and threw her headset on roughly.

"To the Starry Caves," she barked, aggravated by the conversation with Rumple. It didn't matter what it was about, or how she felt going into the conversation, when it ended she always felt so…annoyed.

It was probably his beady eyes.

With an expert hand, the pilot guided them over to the caves known by a select number of islanders. The reason for their name was due to the presence of glowworms on their walls, glowworms that looked like stars in the night.

Snow had actually been the one to show them to Emma the first time, and David had been the one to show them to her. It was a romantic spot to say the least, so she couldn't exactly be surprised that her daughter had decided to take her new fling there, but still.

Caves. Of course when a earthquake struck, Emma had to be inside caves.

Snow felt her heart thumping to a speed similar to the helicopter blades as they neared the rock structure. The rounded tops of the caves were no longer perfect ovals because in one portion of them, there was an impression where the rocks had caved in.

Snow felt her tongue swelling up and a metallic taste filled her mouth.

_What if Emma had been underneath the collapsed part? What if she was already gone?_

"Where would you like me to land?" The pilot asked, snapping Snow out of her worse-case-scenario musings.

"Right beside them is fine," Snow said with a tremble.

Because the tunnels angled deep into the ground, the ceiling of them was no higher than fifteen feet. Kids, unaware that caves were traversing beneath them would often walk on the rock unknowingly.

Snow shot out of the helicopter at the earliest possible moment, only to be jerked back by the headset that was still attached to her head. She yanked it off and sprinted to the rocks, climbing with an ease that could only be attributed to muscle memory.

Though she and her husband were royals now, spending their days in lavish castles and tending to the crowds, the two of them had spent most of their life as soldiers.

Rebels, Emma called them.

It was a name that Snow didn't mind, considering it was true. She _had_ rebelled from the previous government, rightly so, too. But the way Emma said it was laced with disdain and made Snow feel as though she'd done something terribly misguided all those years back.

And so, before the pilot could hurry up even half the rock structure, Snow was standing at the top and poking around with her foot to test the sturdiness of the rocks. It was a dumb idea, to stand on the ceiling that had collapsed in the first place, but Snow's mind was reeling at a rate so fast, that nothing good could come out of it.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, it seemed that however the rocks had fallen, they were sturdy now.

"Find anything?" The pilot, out of breath and finally at the top, asked Snow.

The Queen shook her head and continued to look around the rocks, going as far to bend down and examine the nooks between the large boulders.

"Call my husband and tell him we know where she is. Tell him to call for reinforcements. A crane, helicopter, a drill, I don't care, just get it here."

The pilot, who realized that he had left the phone in the helicopter tried to hide his sigh as best he could and began to scramble down the side of the rocks. Once he had disappeared, Snow turned back to the boulders beneath her feet, her eyes shimmering with unfilled tears.

* * *

"Emma?" Henry asked in a ragged breath as he scooped his hands back between his legs for the umpteenth time.

Emma and Regina both stilled their also moving hands and turned to look at the boy whose face was flushed and running with sweat.

"Yeah?"

"You think we should scream for help?" Henry asked with a cough.

Regina's face, which had already been in a previous state of worry, deepened into concern. She walked over to Henry and pulled him away from the wall of rocks.

They had been at it for an hour at least. Digging in the sand, pushing it back, edging their fingers into nooks and crannies.

Emma had been the one with the idea: dig the sand out below the rocks, and they would shift down maybe giving them some space to climb out, maybe giving them the wiggle room them needed to manipulate the wall that stood too tight right now.

"Take a break Henry. You're going to do no good if you pass out," Regina tried to keep her voice light, knowing that if she spoke with all the defeat that she felt, he was bound to become scared.

"I'm not tired," he insisted, but Emma held up a hand to keep him from going back to the crater of dug out sand.

"C'mon. We'll all take a break."

The two women looked over Henry's head with a glance that attempted to bring the other comfort. It worked, sort of, but only because Emma winked at the brunette next to her, and Regina was so helpless to Emma's charms that she tried to hide the smile the blossomed on her face.

Emma saw it and smiled as well.

Snapping back to reality, Regina saw the upset little boy still staring at the rocks, "we'll play a game."

"Like what?"

"Uh…" Regina didn't exactly have an idea of what game they could possibly play trapped in a cave just before their death, but she needed to keep his spirits up. She couldn't see the desperate look he had on his face when he was crying again. It would break her.

"I spy," Emma said.

Regina looked at her with an unspoken thank you playing on her lips.

"I spy is boring where there are only rocks," Henry grumbled.

"I spy the biggest crack in this entire cave," Emma said as she pointed toward a wall. Unfortunately, it wasn't the collapsed wall, so it wouldn't exactly lead anywhere, but it was the biggest crack she could see, so for the name of the game, it was useful.

Henry's eyes narrowed with the challenge. He scanned around and sprinted over to a different wall and pointed, "Nope. I found it. It's right here."

"Think again," Regina said, almost magically stationed at a different wall, her finger lining a crack near the ground. Henry pressed his lips together in admittance that Regina's was, in fact, the bigger crack.

With a determination that had proved priceless in the past few hours, Henry went at it, inspecting each and every inch of the walls for a crack that would best the both of them.

Regina walked over to join Emma who had sat down on the sand in the middle of the cave. She leaned on the blonde woman, despite the spiking heat. She needed the contact, no matter how sticky it was.

Without thinking about it, Emma extended her arm up and over Regina so that she could hold the woman close next to her, her hand rubbed mindless patterns on her back.

"Do you think we should keep digging?" Emma asked after a little while.

Regina turned her head and watched Henry continuously searching for cracks, his face light and relaxed. "Let him look for just a little longer."

Emma nodded in agreement and reached over Regina's waist to clasp her hand. "I wish I met you sooner," she whispered. Fears that Regina hadn't yet seen settled over the blonde's face.

"Me, too," Regina whispered back and tightened the hand that was holding Emma's.

Just then, they watched as Henry put his finger on a crack, open his mouth and begin to turn his head, but before he spoke he shut it and removed his finger. Apparently, he wasn't confident yet that it was the biggest.

"Regina, if we don't get out of here-" Emma began.

"We will."

"But if we don't-"

"Emma," Regina said firmly, her eyes locking in on the blonde, "we will."

Emma nodded in resignation and went back to filtering some sand through her hands on the ground. "I thought I was supposed to be the blindly brave one," she chuckled quietly.

"But if you were brave all the time, when would I get my shot?" Regina asked with a smile whose sides struggled to stay curled up.

Before Emma was able to respond, there was a sharp crack that echoed inside the cave. Both women turned their heads to check to make sure Henry was okay.

To their surprise, he was standing there grinning

"Henry?"

The boy didn't say anything, only pointed. Emma and Regina followed the direction of his finger and Regina's mouth dropped open when she saw what had the boy all riled up.

In one of the sidewalls, half covered by sand, there was a scoop of rock that had fallen away.

Emma leaped up and ran over to the wall, running her hand over the small hole that had formed there. She looked on the ground and saw a rock resting in the sand.

"I threw the rock so maybe it would crack and then I'd have biggest one but it all just fell away," Henry said fast, all the while shifting from one foot to another in anticipation.

Regina walked up behind Emma, who was still running her hand across the jagged rock and digging away the sand to reveal it.

"What is it?" Regina asked.

Emma picked up the rock in the sand and took a step back, both Henry and Regina looked to her, waiting. A small smile began to unfold into something more, and soon she was laughing lightly.

"What is it?" Regna repeated.

With an outstretched finger, Emma reached forward and broke off a piece of the layered rock. She held it up to the two pairs of waiting eyes, "it's mica."

"What does that mean exactly?" Regina asked hesitantly. She wasn't stupid, but she also knew absolutely nothing about rocks, or caves, or anything that involved rouging it in the outdoors.

Henry and Emma exchanged knowing glances though and soon, he too was smiling.

Emma picked up the rock that Henry had thrown in the first place and took some steps back. She cranked by her arm in preparation to throw it at the wall, "it means we're going to break ourselves out of here."


	15. Chapter 15

"One more time and I'll crawl in and see what we're dealing with," Emma said as Henry cranked back his arm and rocketed the stone at the bowl-shaped indentation rock wall that had fallen away.

* * *

"Just try that one right there," Snow screamed above all the commotion. At the news that the princess of the island was trapped in a cave with a tourist and a child, anyone that was not involved with relief effort on the other side of the island began flocking to the scene of the crime.

Anchormen and women littered the sand, their microphones pressed to their lips and their eyes flashing back and forth between the crane that had pulled up to the caves, and the shiny round circles of their camera lenses.

"Hello. You're here with Channel Four."

"Channel Seven here."

"WRK has got your breaking news and we're here at the caves where Emma Swan is trapped."

The dizzying murmur of the media only added to the noise of the crowds that gathered at the red tape, which marked the perimeter around the rocks.

Intentions of these crowd members were varied.

Some were hoping to get an interview and their fifteen minutes of fame on TV. Some cared desperately about the wellbeing of Emma or Henry. Some were tourists that wanted a great story to return home with.

And in the middle of it all, was Snow, barking orders, her face flushed both from the heat and the stress.

Coordinating all of these people with the help of her husband would have been one thing, but since he was busy working with committees on the volcanic eruption, she was on her own and just about ready to tear her hair out.

"Yes, that one," Snow shouted again in response to the crane operator's questioning. They were going to pull up on one of the fallen rocks in an effort to remove a portion of the cave that they could enter through.

The only problem was, no one could be exactly sure what would happen when that one boulder would be removed. For all they know, that one rock could be holding up the entire structure.

With a gulp, and a sharp nod, Snow gave the go-ahead to the operator. He nodded in return and began to manipulate the machine so that the crane teeth wrapped around the chosen rock.

The rest of the crowd quieted, the media all turned their cameras for the best view. Whatever was about to happen, they were all going to be there to see it.

* * *

"Maybe if you guys come in here, we can all chip away at it," Emma suggested as she backed out the tunnel they had begun to create in the wall of the cave. Henry nodded and bounded into the tunnel with a rock in hand.

He pressed himself to the front of it, and soon, Regina and Emma heard the telltale pounding of his rock on the mica wall. It should have been a good sign, Henry being so productive and eager to help, but Regina and Emma knew better. The boy was at the stage of desperation now, and it had taken the form of twitchy eagerness to do anything and everything he could.

It had been almost fifteen hours that they had been stuck in the cave and the heat had become the forefront of their worries. Sweat had soaked their clothes long ago, dehydrating them and draining them of precious energy they could not afford.

"If you get one wall, I'll get the other, we can widen it as Henry keeps it moving forward," Emma said as she placed a hand on Regina's shoulder.

Regina's chin was quivering in an unstable pattern, speeding up when she felt tears prickling her eyes and slowing down when she managed to calm herself for a second. This is what desperation looked like on her.

"It's going to be okay," Emma tried when she noticed Regina's chin, but her voice was trembling as well and less than convincing. "We just need to focus on the task at hand."

Hesitantly, Regina nodded and leaned down to crawl on her hands and knees into the tunnel, but when she got close, she stopped.

"What's wrong?" Emma asked.

"I can't," Regina said. She shook her head, those tears finally falling from her eyes and disappearing into the slick layer of sweat on her face.

"It's going to be okay."

"Claustrophobic-" Regina's breathing began to speed up, and shorten until she was panting in quick, choppy breaths. "-can't."

Emma flung herself over to the brunette as fast as she could and began rubbing her back, her arm, speaking in hushed tones, whatever she could to calm the woman down.

"This is all my fault," she muttered to herself over and over, "this is all my fault."

Before Regina was able to return her breathing back to normal, powdery dust started to fall from the ceiling of the cave. Just a little at first, but enough for Emma and Regina to look up in question.

Then, it came harder, a blanket of dust falling from above them like rain. Pebbles shifting, and tumbling joined the dust and bounced off the sides on the way down.

"Get in," Emma yelled above the noise that had multiplied in the past few seconds. She shoved Regina into the tunnel that could barely fit them three and crawled in after her, taking residence in the hole in the wall as the rocks above them tumbled down.

* * *

"No…." Snow watched as the rock of her choosing pulled up, the metal crane encapsulating around it. In response to this missing piece, the portion of the cave where the rock had been taken from shifted inward.

Rocks collapsed from the ceiling and dropped into the cave, creating the illusion of a sucking black hole, or a bed of quicksand.

Horror settled on Snow's face as her jaw hung down. Her worst nightmare: that the cave would collapse, had just come true.

It took ten seconds for the major movements of the collapse to occur. After that a few small rocks and pebbles shifted here and there, but most of the damage was done. Snow ordered the crane to back up, and sprinted toward the cave.

Officials and officers tried to stop her. After all, a queen should not be traversing in a dangerous and unstable rock formation, but this was her daughter they were talking about, her daughter, who she may have just killed because of her decision to pick up that rock. _That_ rock. Why did she pick that rock?

* * *

When the falling stopped and the noise quieted, Emma released her iron grip from around Regina. After pushing the woman in the cave, she had wrapped her entire body around her, her arms extending even more to pull Henry into her embrace.

When her back had created the seal between the tunnel and the rest of the cave her face had scraped against the mica and now a gash spread across her cheek. It swelled with blood, and began to make the trip down her cheek. With a turn, she looked out behind her, the air in her lungs catching when she saw sunlight extending into every inch of the previously dark cave.

Sunlight.

There was so much sunlight it made her eyes burn gloriously. Backing up, she stumbled on a fall rock and fell down, landing crushingly on her tailbone, but couldn't really find it within herself to care about the pain.

There was sun.

Actually sun.

She looked back into the tunnel and saw Regina frozen, a glazed look in her eyes. Her face was pale beyond belief. Emma knew how weak the woman felt, but she had no idea she was in the position to be this close to passing out. She looked awful and it set in motion a worry that stabbed at Emma's chest.

With a steady hand, she helped Regina out, her heart pounding rapidly. Meanwhile, the brunette was so out of it, she couldn't even appreciate the fact that they could now see the sky.

Henry, who had been pressed up against the back of the tunnel, climbed out slowly, his face remained scrunched up until those delightful rays hit his face. A grin unfolded on his lips and stretched from dirt ridden cheek to dirt ridden cheek.

"The sky," was all he said, his head tipped up.

For a brief second, the corner of Emma's lips curled up. The joy that Henry was exuding was contagious.

"Emma?" A voice came from up above and all of the sudden Snow's face appeared on the edge of hole in the cave roof.

"Mom!" Emma screamed, hugging Regina tight to her in order to keep them both from tipping over.

"Hold on, we're getting someone to take you out." Tears flooded down Snow's face in relief and hung on her jawline. She sobbed and yelled at the emergency personnel to retrieve the three.

Eventually, they were pulled out with a harness.

Henry first.

Then, both Emma and Regina, since the brunette had still not shown any indication of really being there and couldn't even stand on her own. Instead, she just blinked and stared, her body and mind in complete shock.

When they touch down on the sand of the beach, they were surrounded by people. Police tried to keep all people as far as possible from the survivors, but bystanders stormed the red tape to provide assistance or take pictures or just watch all the commotion.

Henry was surrounded by his friends from the island and was overwhelmed with water and food and blankets.

Emma became an epicenter of attention. Snow pushed through and hugged her daughter and Emma, despite her negative feelings towards her mother, was so happy to be alive and to see the sky that she was willing to forget it all for just a second. She hugged back as tightly as she could and thanked her mother for saving her. For saving them.

After that second was over though, Emma turned back to make sure Regina was okay, but when she looked to where the woman had been previously sitting with a blanket, there was no one.

Her head jerked back and forth, scanning the crowd for Regina.

She needed to find Regina.

A flash of brown hair was all it took to convince herself that she had spotted the woman and she was off, pushing and shoving through the crowd.

Tripping from exhaustion and bleeding from the mica, she grabbed a woman's arm and turned her. "Regina?"

The woman's eyes widened considerably when she saw it was Emma talking to her. "Princess Em-," she stuttered, but before she could get anything else out, Emma was gone, onto the next woman with brown hair.

It took two more mistaken Regina's before Emma spotted the real Regina being led away by a man, a man with short hair and tanned skin. A man who was holding her as if she was his own.

Emma ran as fast as she could, given the fact that her tailbone was now throbbing and she was exhausted. She was so exhausted.

"Regina," she shouted, but the man didn't stop and Regina's head didn't turn.

With a will that had run through her blood her entire life, Emma pushed faster until she reached out a hand and latched onto the man's arm. When he felt the resistance, he finally turned.

Robin.

That's who was leading Regina as she stumbled and fell through the sand. Fucking Robin. Emma noticed he was now sporting a black eye.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Emma asked with a venom that sank deep into any skin it could get its hands on.

"Saving my wife," Robin answered as he looked down to Regina in his arms.

"Ex-wife."

"That was a mistake," Robin barked. "She wasn't thinking clearly. She didn't know what she was doing."

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"_Excuse_ me," Robin looked at Regina as if he were finding a way to place her in order to have his hands free for Emma.

"Don't you dare put her down," Emma said as she glanced at Regina. The woman was still out of it and oblivious to everything occurring around her. "Give her to me."

"To you?" Robin asked with eyebrows raised. "To you?"

"Yes."

"What are you looking to get out of this? I did some digging and you aren't _with_ her. You two didn't come on vacation together. You met two days ago. Two days. I've known Regina for seven years. You think she wants to go with you..so what, you can ditch her in a couple days?"

"I'm not going to-"

"That's the other thing. Word is, you won't leave the island. So what are you going to do? Ask her to stay here forever?"

"I-" Emma stuttered. It didn't matter. It didn't matter what her plans with Regina in the future were. They would figure it out. All that mattered was that she wasn't with Robin. She knew that was what Regina would want. She knew.

"Well, here's another news flash for you, she won't. She's obsessed with work. Obsessed. She tell you it was my fault I cheated? Did she tell you I did it because I'm an asshole? I did it because she worked eighty hour weeks. I did it because she was never home."

"You think that because she was busy that gives you a reason to cheat? With her therapist? You've got to be kidding me."

"You don't understand. You have no idea what you're getting into. This woman here is nasty. She's mean. You think she's always relaxed and fun? Do something wrong, she'll rip your heart out."

Emma looked at the brunette in Robin's arms. Her head was lolling to the side, her hair still wet with perspiration was sticking to the sides of her face. Her lips were parted slightly, cracked from dehydration. She didn't know why she hadn't noticed it before, but there was a stream of blood coming from a gash under her hair.

In Robin's arms she looked to small.

In Robin's arms Regina was so small.

"I know her," Emma said with a shake of her head, her eyes refusing to leave that woman that had already wrapped her fingers around Emma's heart "and that's not who she is."

"You know her? Yeah? Already?"

"Yes," Emma breathed out and she believed it.

She was confident that knowing a person wasn't defined by the time you'd spent together. She had friends she'd known for years that she didn't know half as well as the woman who was nearly collapsed in front of her.

Robin looked dubiously at the blonde in front of him. The blonde that was looking at the woman in his arms with such adoration it made him feel ill.

"You know what? Have her," Robin snarled as he shoved Regina out of his arms. She fell onto the ground, her legs incapable of supporting any weight and folding beneath her.

Emma immediately dropped to the sand to gather the brunette in her arms. Robin was no longer even a thought to her. She ran a hand across Regina's cheek to push her hair out of her face and after that, she continued to swipe her thumb back and forth Regina's cheek in a soothing motion.

Robin stomped off in the sand calling behind him, "don't come running back to me when she's not what she seems."

Emma kept her eyes locked onto Regina's.

"He's wrong," she said to Regina as she leaned down. She pressed her lips to Regina's forehead as if the kiss itself would heal the woman on the ground. Moving her lips to Regina's ear, she whispered softly, "I know you."

Emma pulled back to see if Regina could hear her, she looked all over the woman's face, searching for any sign of recognition. Wetness gathered at the corner of Emma's eyes.

"Come back to me," Emma said with a cracking voice, but Regina's mind was off somewhere else and refused to come back. At this point, Emma didn't know if she would ever come back. The fact that the woman in front of her was unresponsive but awake was more worrying than if she was passed out.

Brain damage. The words entered Emma's mind and refused to leave.

"You can have me. You can have all of me," Emma continued, "you just need to come back."

Emma encircled both arms around Regina's shoulders and pulled her close to her. Regina head leaned against Emma's chest but kept her head angled down. She refused to break eye contract with the beautiful woman. "I could love you, Regina. I could. I'm already falling now, you just need to be there when I hit the bottom okay? Please."

Emma's voice was dry and crackly now. She barely had any voice remaining, and so with all she had left she whispered out horsely one last thing. "I could love you."

And then, those big brown eyes shifted from their glazed over state and looked at Emma straight on.

Regina's tongue tried to wet her lips and she croaked out two words before her eyes rolled back, her eyelids shutting as she slipped into unconsciousness.

"You promise?"

* * *

**Before people start bailing at the prospect, and because of the reputation some past stories may have give me *cough cough The Art of Being Extraordinary* there will be no character deaths in this fic.**


	16. Chapter 16

Light came into the room in splinters. At first there were only a couple, then more, the more, until they filtered in through the window with a strong enough force to shatter Regina's sleep. Her eyes opened suddenly at the bright curtain behind her eyelids and it took her a couple of blinks before the blinding light changed into sharpening shapes.

A lamp. A chair. A hunched over body.

The lamp was tan and cheap and sterile.

The chair was equally ugly and littered in stripes.

The body was covered with a blanket, one that had either been originally draped haphazardly or had fallen off in the middle of the night. A shoulder peeked out, from a corner of it and the smoothness of the tan skin interested Regina.

She struggled to piece together the where and how and why of what she was seeing. The information was coming to her, eventually, just at a much slower rate. A rate that required patience, something that she did not have.

A glance around the room and the pieces began to come together. She was in a hospital room where, she looked at an IV entering her arm, where she was a patient. She looked at the hospital gown wrapped around her body. Yes, definitely a patient. There was no other explanation of why she would be caught in something as ugly at that. That's for sure.

According to first glance it appeared that her legs were fine, they weren't wrapped or plastered with a cast, and they moved properly. Her arms, too, those seemed to work okay.

One turn of her head and she felt a dull ache at the base of her neck. Stiffness. Soreness. Aching that hurt like hell.

By her abdomen too, that hurt. The pain was sharper there though, more like a knife.

She collected the feelings and pains that began to come to her and filtered them through her brain in search of a memory that could explain this situation.

A car accident maybe, but, no. That didn't seem right. A fall? No. She huffed. All she could remember were rocks, something that didn't seem very helpful to her at the moment.

Before she continued to conjure up new explanations, the body that was currently draped across her bed twitched. She watched it carefully. Blonde hair began to tremble as its owner stirred.

Tentatively, Regina reached a hand out toward the hair and pushed it back from where she assumed a face should be. Once strands were pushed away, Emma's head shot up, her eyes fluttering madly.

"You're awake," she nearly yelled.

Regina's lips parted a bit, but nothing came out.

Emma's eyes wandered all over her as if to make sure the other woman was still safe, still healthy (mostly), still in one piece.

"They told me you would wake yesterday and when you didn't I just… I had to sleep in here." Emma pushed her unruly hair back with flat palms and attempted to settle it, but the strands continued to jut out at angles.

Regina's face was mostly flat and unreadable, except for the patch of skin between her eyebrows. That part had become wrinkled and scrunched.

"I hope you don't mind," Emma added as her teeth nipped at her bottom lip. Fidgeting had always been a bad habit of hers, but it came out especially strong when she was nervous. The doctor had told her the chance of temporary amnesia was possible and with Regina sitting here staring at her, the nerves that she had spent hours talking down flared up once again.

"Regina?" Emma's voice crackled with concern, with desperation, with all the wishing she could muster.

For awhile, no words were spoken and there was only silence. The two women stared at each other out of pure observation. Sure, Emma's observation was hypersensitive and panicky while Regina's was one of curiosity and exploration, but they were looking at each other nonetheless.

Eventually the right corner of Regina's lips pulled up. Emma noticed it and in true Emma fashion, she jumped on that single speck of hope and ran with it, her lips unfolding into a grin.

"Emma," Regina pushed out with a gravely voice. Emma's smile grew and she nodded. She nodded so hard her hair bounced like springs. "Yes."

And with the face of the blonde woman, the memories began working their way up to the forefront of Regina's brain. The fog began to lift. "Emma," Regina said again, but this time it was sighed with relief. She sunk her shoulders back into the bed and tilted her head ever so slowly so that her hair spread across the pillow. Unconsciously, a light whimper worked its way up her throat and out her mouth. It seemed that ever movement caused her some sort of pain.

When Emma saw her trying to get comfortable, she reached over to help, pulling up the blanket and adjusting the pillow.

The doctor's words rung in her head._ She's going to be tired. She's on a lot of pain medication right now. _

And while the only thing Emma wanted to do was onslaught Regina with questions and answers, she knew the woman had to rest.

Regina's eyes drifted closed and while she tried to stop them, they only continued to get heavier and heavier until it seemed impossible to keep them awake. She felt Emma rustle on the side of her and just before she fell asleep a panic shot through her chest more painful than any ache she felt physically.

_What would she do if Emma left?_

It was a loaded question that she knew applied on many levels, but in her drug induced haze, she chose to address the most current one. With a movement quicker than all the rest, her hand shot out.

Emma, who had been inspecting the monitors stationed to the side of Regina's bed, glanced down she felt a hand intertwine with her own. Regina's eyes were closed, her face muscles twitching lightly with sleep, but it wasn't until Emma's hand squeezed back that a sigh released into the air.

"Don't leave me," Regina mumbled. "I don't have anyone else."

Emma sunk down into the chair, her knees buckling at the desperation in Regina's wish.

* * *

"Yes, exactly. Her CT scans look completely normal."

"So she's going to be okay?" Emma asked.

The doctor flipped through the charts one more time. "Yes, her head is going to be just fine. She'll have a headache for awhile, but it's nothing that time can't cure."

Emma let out a breath of relief.

"But you must consider that she also has a broken rip and a fractured hip." Emma nodded. When the doctors had originally told her of these additional injuries, she had considered Regina lucky. Now, the thought of them only brought her dread.

The doctor raised her eyebrows and placed the pen back into the top of the clipboard. She turned her head up to look at Emma. "She's going to need someone to help her on a daily basis. Walking, getting in and out of bed, showering. She's going to need a lot of help."

"Yes, I-" Emma stopped. Regina was due to leave the island tomorrow. Through all the fuss and worrying it had completely slipped her mind that her time with Regina had a limit, a limit that was just about to expire.

"Are you able to provide this help for her?" The doctor asked.

"Yes. Well…maybe..." Emma looked down at her feet. "no…" Emma trailed off.

_Would Regina stay on the island longer? Would there be someone to take care of her back at home? She remembered her saying that she didn't have many good friends at home and now Robin was out of the picture as well. Did she have family that could come and help her? Where did her family live?_

Around and around her head spun with the realization of how little she knew about the woman sleeping just across the hall.

"Do you know someone that could?" The doctor continued, her voice growing with confusion and peppering with annoyance.

_Would she be able to go back to her job? How would she get food? Could she walk with crutches? Would she be able to get around with a wheelchair? How long would it be until she was healthy again?_

"Ms. Swan?"

Emma's attention jerked in front of her, "huh?"

The doctor sighed, "Ms. Swan. Do you know someone that could take care of Regina Mills. She's going to need to return home to the mainland and we need to contact someone as soon as possible to make sure she has care."

"I'll do it," Emma burst out. Just after she'd said it she nodded firmly as if to convince herself it was the truth.

"You're going to travel back to the mainland and provide Ms. Mills with care until she's fully healthy again?" The doctor asked to clarify.

"Yes," Emma responded firmly before turning back to the window that looked into Regina's room.

Inside, Regina lay, still asleep on the bed. Her body was scrunched up as if it yearned to roll into a ball, but the hand that Emma had been holding remained stretched out and dangling off the bed. Emma felt a pull in her chest. An anxiety to return to her bedside bounced around within her. She needed to fill that empty hand with her own before she woke up.

"Are we done here for now?" Emma asked with eyes only on Regina.

"Yes, that's all for now."

"Good."

And within seconds Emma was back in that room, sitting in her chair, holding Regina's hand so that when she woke up, she would be there.


	17. Chapter 17

_3 days later_

Emma pushed Regina down the aisle of the airport in a wheel chair at a high speed. She hadn't meant to, her plan had been to easily roll the woman down the middle in an effort to avoid both jostling as well as hitting pedestrians, but every time she slowed, Regina would stand up as if she were ready to jump ship.

So Emma kept the chair at a solid speed. So fast, in fact, that she was trailing behind in a swift walk, arguably a jog. At first it hadn't seemed to bad. A nice workout at the very least, but after passing rows and rows of gates Emma was tired, the pushing was exhausting, and she was beginning to think that the airport was slanted uphill against her favor.

"I can walk Emma," Regina said for about the millionth time. With a screech of the wheels, Emma pulled to a stop and walked to the front of the wheelchair until she was face to face with the brunette.

She squatted down until they were eye level, one hand resting on each of the armrests.

"You know the doctor said you shouldn't."

"But I can," Regina muttered with a pout on her lips. She was leaning back in the chair, her arms crossed in front of her chest.

Emma sighed, but a damn stubborn smile flitted across her lips. Regina couldn't have looked more like a child if she tried. "You're not walking."

Regina rolled her eyes and slumped further in the chair. "I feel impotent."

Emma nodded empathetically before adding, "Yes, you look like it, too."

Unable to help it, Regina felt her lips stretch at tried to keep her nose scrunched up, a last remaining piece of the stern look she so often displayed, but it didn't look all that threatening when it was accompanied by a grin.

Truth is, deep down, she was a mix between ecstatic and so desperately anxious that she had truthfully considered throwing herself from the moving chair several times

Emma was coming back to her house, with her, for two months. That was the deal

Two months. During which Emma would nurse her back to health and then… well they would see.

"Well I'm not the one who looks like she's run a marathon," Regina countered as she very obviously surveyed Emma's distraught and slightly perspired appearance.

With a scoff, Emma stood and returned behind the wheel chair. "Well maybe if you weren't so heavy…"

"Oh, I-" Regina began to threaten as she stood up, but Emma was too fast. She pushed the chair into motion and Regina was back on her butt within seconds. Fuming, Regina could hear the chuckling behind her as the blonde continued to navigate them toward their gate.

Once they had arrived, Emma parked the Regina, much to her dismay, and went to get them both a coffee. Now alone, Regina felt increasingly self-conscious. With the blonde around, the wheelchair was a joke, a funny story even, but without her she just felt like everyone was staring, judging, wondering what the hell happened to her.

And don't be mistaken, both Regina and Emma were beaten up. Despite the makeup that Regina had carefully applied, she still had healing gashes on her face, some scratches on her neck, a cut lip. Emma, on the other hand, was sporting a black eye that had bruised down to her nose.

So in an effort to go unnoticed, or at least, less noticed, Regina reached for a book in her bag. She figured she could duck her head, hide her face, become invisible. Inside her bag, her fingers ran over the first book she could reach. She pulled it out and glanced at the cover. Zen Interior Design: A Collection.

Appalled at the fact she even owned that book, she stared, distasteful memories coming back to her in waves. _How could she have been so pretentious? How was it that she could still be so pretentious?_

She hadn't bought that book to learn about zen design. She'd bought it for her bookshelf. That's right, she'd bought a book because the title, she imagined, would look good on her bookshelf. And apparently when she was packing for the trip, she had thought it would look good in her bag. Not that anyone was looking in there except for her.

Ridiculous. It was all so ridiculous.

"Yeah. I was wondering about that one," Emma laughed as she came up from the side with two cups of coffee in her hands.

Embarrassingly, Regina returned the book to the bag and took the coffee. "Zen is supposed to decrease clutter, relieve stress in your life."

Emma waited, still unconvinced, her eyes brows high on her forehead.

"I thought it sounded….cultured." Regina mumbled into the top of her coffee. She cringed as she waited for Emma to laugh at her, mock her. God knows she wanted to do it to herself, but it never came, the woman only sat there with her forehead all wrinkled.

"And did you enjoy it?" Emma asked after a sip.

"Honestly. I've never even opened it."

"Then," Emma began, "let's throw it out."

Regina's jaw dropped as if the notion was the most preposterous thing she'd ever heard. She held the hardcover up and examined its pristine condition. "Throw it out? It's brand new!"

"Yes, but are you going to read it?"

"Well," Regina paused and examined the book, "probably not. But we can't just throw it out."

"Why not?"

"Because it's a waste."

"Yes, but it's a waste sitting in your bag also."

Regina huffed, "Fine."

Without a word, Emma placed her cup on the seat next to her, took the book gently from Regina's hand, and got up. But she didn't turn toward the garbage can as Regina had thought she would. Instead, she walked over to a woman sitting in a seat near them. She looked to be in her late 30's on some sort of business trip.

In fact, the more Regina looked at this mysterious woman, the more she realized that was what she must've looked like when she arrived at the island. Polished, manicured, and poignant, the woman sat there with a pants-suit combo that was tailored to perfection. Beside her was a briefcase and a single carry on. In her hands was a BlackBerry.

And there was Emma, standing beside her in those shorts and a loose fitting top that barely hung on her shoulders, talking to her. And then they were laughing at something together and Regina felt a pang of jealously because that was the version of her that Emma had been attracted to in the beginning.

Now look at her. Banged up and wrapped in clothes that gave her less shape than a potato sack.

Hands found their way to the wheels of the wheelchair, as the jealousy built inside of her. Leaning forward, she got ready to wheel right over there and…do what? Well, she had no idea.

Fortunately, for her, and for Emma, that much wasn't necessary because the blonde was already returning without the zen book.

"What happened?" Regina almost growled, her fingers still wrapped tightly around the wheels.

"I gave her the book."

"Why were you both laughing?"

A single eyebrow raised on Emma's face as she eyed the redness climbing up the side of Regina's neck. Her lips quirked into a side smile that she knew the brunette couldn't resist. "What's this about?"

Regina's hands finally relaxed, and she glanced over at the woman, who had already cracked open the book, currently flipping through it. She turned to Emma who was staring at her with that goofily hopeful face.

Upon this closer inspection, she noticed that Emma's nose was the slightest bit burnt, and that her cheeks were dusted with a red that only comes from too much sun. And then there was that bruise.

"Come here," she said and Emma leaned down as she had before. She reached out a hand to Emma's face and traced along the side of her bruised skin, brushing it with the lightest touch she could muster. "Does this hurt?"

Emma's eyes bounced between Regina's as if they didn't have a choice. Side to side, she shook her head. "Not really."

Regina lifted her fingers anyway and pushed a strand of hair behind Emma's ear. She looked down on Emma as if she were watching a trainwreck occur before her eyes. A trainwreck that she was going to cause. After all, how could she not? She'd spent a lifetime of pushing people she loved away. What was going to change now?

"Are you sure you want to do this?" The brunette got out eventually and suddenly Emma understood the sad look in the other woman's eyes.

"I mean, I just got jealous over-" Regina motioned towards the business woman, "well, over-" she scoffed, speechless and unable to get any air out.

"A book," Emma finished for her.

The held in breath was released in confirmation, "A book."

"You know," Emma said, "I didn't just give her the book. "Confusion played on Regina's features.

"I traded it for something."

"What did you trade it for?" Regina asked, her hand having dropped from Emma's hair.

"A picture," Emma replied. With a flick of her eyes, Regina glanced back over to the woman and upon second glance she realized that the bag next to the woman wasn't a briefcase, it was a professional camera bag.

When her eyes tracked back to Emma, the blonde pulled out a rectangular picture from her back pocket and placed it in Regina's hands.

Regina looked at it for a second before she felt everything inside of her rest. At ease. That's what this picture was telling her. Be at ease.

It was all going to be okay.

In one hand, she held it to the side of her, while the other reached for the base of Emma's neck. Before Emma's brain could even begin to work, Regina was leaning forward and kissing the other woman. Kissing her as if they'd done it a million times before.

When the kiss ended, she pulled back and watched those bright eyes stare into her own. Emma Swan, ever the romantic, was grinning and chuckling because kisses from Regina made her feel suspended, and Regina Mills couldn't quite take how adorable it was, so she leaned her forehead on Emma's shoulder and laughed too because how could she not?

Rotating her head away from Emma's neck, so that her cheek rested against the loose shirt, Regina stared at the picture in her hand.

It was of them. She and Emma. Laying on the sand, asleep after the first night they met. Regina's face was tucked in the nook between Emma's head and neck. Emma's arm was slung over Regina's waist. Their feet were splayed every which way and their skin was covered in sand.

The best part though, wasn't the close proximity that had wriggled theirselves to in the middle of the night or the sand that clung to their skin as if they had been washed up from shore. No, the best part was that Regina was smiling in her sleep.

Emma watched Regina look at the picture over her head. "She recognized me from it when I first walked over. I was going to buy it from her when she asked about the book. Turns out we both had what the other wanted."

Reluctantly, Regina leaned back in her chair, slightly shocked that they were still in an airport, and even more embarrassed that she had been so suspended in Emma's arms that she had forgotten.

A beep of the telecom. "We are now boarding A8. Gate A8. Boarding."

They both glanced up. A8. That was them

"You ready?" Emma asked, hopeful. God was she ever so hopeful.

Regina nodded with a pause so the blonde stood up and gathered their things. Just as her hands circled around those plastic grips she heard a voice ring out behind them.

"Emma! Regina!

Their heads craned, as they searched for the source of the voice, but all they saw was a crowd.

"Emma! Re-" A brown muss of hair bobbed throughout the crowd. Henry zig zagged between people as he made his way to the front.

"Henry?" They both managed to work out in surprise.

With a few more steps, the boy stood in front of them, bent over, his chest heaving up and down. His face was dirty, his clothes were tattered. He was the definition of a hot mess.

"Henry, what are you doing here?" Emma asked. Worry was written plainly on her face.

He tilted his head up and flashed a giant smile with two rows of white teeth. "I wanted to say goodbye." He got out before glancing behind him in paranoia.

Regina felt her heart melt inside that tough exterior she presented to everyone. She reached over for the boy and pulled him into a hug that was awkward and uncomfortable against the wheelchair but so, so worth it.

Emma gave him a hug as well as held his head in her hands. "Hold down the island for me, okay?"

He nodded, tears beginning to prickle the back of his eyes. His chin quivered as he nodded. And Emma remembered in that moment just how young he was, just how fragile.

"Two months?" He asked hopefully. Emma nodded and Regina's couldn't help but feel guilty that she was tearing the mother and son like duo away from each other. Something inside of her yearned to tell Emma to stay, for Henry, but that thought simultaneously rendered her immobile. Because if Emma didn't come with her, she didn't know what she'd do…

But, as always, Henry read her mind and stepped in front of her, "I'm glad she's going with you," he said with a smile. And then he leaned forward and cupped his hands around his lips in a whisper. "She needs you as much as you need her." He pulled away and attempted a wink he no doubt picked up from Emma.

Regina paused in awe, confused at how this little boy could embody so many years of wisdom in one little package.

Before anything else was said, there was a shout from the direction in which Henry had come. The trio watched two guards fight to break through the crowd just as Henry had.

"I've got to go," Henry said hurriedly as he watched the guards get closer and closer.

That was when it occurred to Emma, only paid passengers were allowed to enter this part of the airport. How had Henry…

The guards were coming closer and Henry raised his hands above his head and waved them. "Over here!" he said to the guards, taunting them. Emma chuckled, the boy had always loved a good adrenaline rush.

He gave them one last smile, a wave, and a "see ya later," before he took off and disappeared into the crowd of people.

* * *

**Let me know what you think :)**


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